Women's Volleyball . August 29, 2024

Volleyball Opens Season With Challenging Tournament Field at Duke

DURHAM, N.C. – South Carolina volleyball begins its 51st season with a three-game weekend tournament at Duke, running Aug. 30 to Sept. 1. The Gamecocks play one game each day, facing No. 13 Kansas on Friday, Colgate on Saturday and the host Blue Devils on Sunday. The Gamecocks, entering year seven under head coach Tom Mendoza, are coming off an 11-16 record in 2023 and return 12 players from last fall’s roster.

Fans can follow the action all weekend on the ACC Network’s web-only streaming service, ACCNX, and through @Gamecockvolley on Twitter and @GamecockVB on Instagram.

SCOUTING THE JAYHAWKS
Kansas enters Friday’s season opener coming off a 24-win season in 2023, earning it the No. 13 rank entering the fall and the Big 12 conference coaches picked the team as preseason favorites to lead the league. The Jayhawks finished last season with a 3-2 loss against Penn State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The offense is powered by senior leadership, led by 2023 Big 12 Setter of the Year Camryn Turner. She led the conference in assists in 2023, averaging 10.68 per set, while the Jayhawk offense hit .274 for the season (20th-best in the nation). Senior pins Ayah Elnady and London Davis are the two leading attackers returning. Elnady finished second on the team in both kills (3.44) and points (4.17) per set and Davis added over 300 kills and 76 total blocks on the right pin. As a team, Kansas led the Big 12 in assists (12.93 per set), digs (15.44/s) and kills (13.89/s) in 2023.

SCOUTING THE RAIDERS
Colgate finished the 2023 season with a 22-8 record and won the Patriot League for the third season in a row. The Raiders fell short in the first round of the NCAA tournament, losing to No. 17 Creighton. Six starters return for the team, led by preseason Patriot League player of the year honoree Abby Shadwick. The rising senior hit .251 with 2.46 kills per set in 2023. Fifth-year Gillian Hauschild also returns, leading the team in total kills and points last fall. Defensively, the team will need to fill the void left by middle Sophie Thompson, who accounted for 165 of the team’s 284 total blocks.

SCOUTING THE BLUE DEVILS
Weekend host Duke finished on the wrong side of the postseason bubble with a 19-10 record last season. The Blue Devils will lean on 2023 all-ACC pin Kerry Keefe, who averaged 3.36 kills per set on a blistering season hitting percentage of .308 last fall. The emergence of Rachel Richardson will be key for the offense, the rising senior had the second-most kills of any returner on the roster, averaging 1.48 per set. The biggest question mark heading into the fall will be the team’s core of middles after the graduation of Jess Robinson and Lizzie Fleming from the 2023 squad. The duo combined to have a hand in 208 of the team’s 253.5 total blocks last fall. Another loss of importance was the team’s libero, Madison Bryant – who shifted roles from player to staff member since last season – she led the team with 387 digs.

SETTING THE SCENE
The team carries three setters on the roster for 2024, bringing back junior Kimmie Thompson and sophomore Sydney Floyd while adding in Towson transfer Sarah Jordan. The team lost Claire Wilson to a medical retirement, but Jordan had success and experience running both a single-setter and two-setter offense during her career at Towson. The Gamecocks are looking to improve the offense’s connection after back-to-back seasons flirting with a .200 team hitting percentage – the lowest two so far under head coach Tom Mendoza. Jordan carried the majority of the setting role in the team’s preseason scrimmage against Coastal Carolina on Aug. 24, passing out 29 assists in 3+ sets of action.

FIVE FACES IN NEW PLACES
The Gamecocks added five new student-athletes to the roster for the fall season. Each of the five have a different background to bring to a squad featuring 11 returners:

Jolie Cranford (Highlands Ranch, Colo.) joins the indoor team after two standout seasons with Gamecock beach volleyball. She will continue to play beach in the spring. She enters her junior season as the beach program’s winningest player on the active roster, holding a career mark of 41-21. Her .661 win percentage through two seasons currently ranks seventh in program history for Gamecocks with at least 50 career starts. During her high school career in Colorado, she was a two-time all-state and four-time all-league selection in volleyball.

Maggie Elliott (Mount Pleasant, S.C.) is the third crossover athlete on the roster, joining Riley Whitesides and Jolie Cranford on the beach volleyball team. She earned four letters at Lucy Garrett Beckham high school, playing for her mother, Adria, who played collegiate volleyball at Florida State. Her father also has a strong athletic background, competing in beach volleyball on the AVP Pro Tour for 16 years and also working as a collegiate beach coach. Maggie led her high school team in kills for all four years of high school, surpassing 1,000 in her career. She helped the Bengals win their region, with a top finish of third overall in the state.

Victoria Harris (Columbia, S.C.) will be a freshman this fall, but enrolled early with the Gamecocks and spent the spring semester training and rehabbing a high school injury. She totaled over 1,300 digs and over 1,400 service receptions at Cardinal Newman high school, leading the team to two South Carolina state championships. The defensive standout was a two-time all-state and all-region team member, earned Under Armour NEXT MVP and also collected 2021 SCISA Player of the Year honors.

Sarah Jordan (Leesburg, Va. / Towson) transferred to the Gamecocks after two seasons at Towson, playing in 56 total matches as the team’s setter. She finished her time as a Tiger with over 1500 assists and 400 digs, also adding 45 service aces behind the line. Jordan led the Tigers in assists with 973 and averaged 9.18 assists per set as a sophomore in 2023, also recording career highs in digs (246) and kills (88). She already has some experience playing in the Carolina Volleyball Center, as Towson opened the 2023 season at South Carolina and split a two-game series with the Gamecocks.

Anna Wilson (Burlington, Ontario, Canada / High Point) transferred after two seasons at High Point; after redshirting as a true freshman, she played in 15 matches in 2023. Her top performance with the Panthers came in the Big South conference tournament title match, where she hit .412 with seven kills against Winthrop on Nov. 19, 2023. While in high school, she won a provincial championship with her club team and helped her high school team win a silver medal at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations.

A VICTORIOUS RETURN
She might have played high school volleyball just down the road from the Carolina Volleyball Center, but freshman Victoria Harris has taken the long way to collegiate volleyball. A standout libero at Cardinal Newman School, about 10 miles to the northeast of downtown Columbia, Harris had to overcome two serious injuries to make it to the next phase of her volleyball career.

In September 2022, she fractured her hip during a game after a teammate landed on her. She recovered in time to play the following season, but endured another setback when she tore her ACL in August of 2023. She had surgery on her knee in October and then worked towards graduating early from high school and enrolling at South Carolina for the spring semester.

She was finally cleared for full action at the end of July and immediately jumped into an important role for the Gamecocks. In the team’s final preseason tuneup, facing Coastal Carolina on Aug. 24, Harris played all five sets as the team’s libero. If she retains the role, she would join current senior Morgan Carter as the only Gamecocks to play libero as true freshmen since the position was first introduced in college volleyball in 2002.

ANADI READY TO PEAK IN SENIOR SEASON
Senior middle Oby Anadi entered the 2022 season as a relative unknown, but quickly made herself known as a blocker, finishing with 120, but still was working her way into the team’s offensive game plan. The 2023 season proved her growth, as she set career highs on offense AND defense. Anadi totaled 119 kills over her first two seasons (41 matches), but finished with 146 over 27 matches. On defense, she had a personal-best 129 total blocks last fall and became the first Gamecock since Belita Salters in 2007 to have a hand in 50 percent or more of the team’s total blocks. Going into her final season, Anadi’s 272 total blocks sits just outside the top 10 for most in the rally scoring era.

TRYING TO PIN DOWN THE OFFENSE
The team graduated Kiune Fletcher, its top offensive producer from 2023, and will look ahead to a mix of veterans and rising young talent to find new production on the left and right pins this fall. Riley Whitesides missed most of the final month of last season due to injury but enters her fifth year already with 1,000 career kills. Joining her predominantly on the left pin is rising junior Alayna Johnson, who also has battled injuries in the past but had a career year in 2023 and is credited by the coaching staff as one of the strongest performers during the spring training season.

On the right pin, Fletcher put together one of the best offensive seasons by an opposite in the program’s modern scoring era, hitting .266 with 245 total kills. The team will look to Campbell Paris or Tireh Smith to play the crucial two-way role of stout defender and reliable offensive option on the right; Paris had 188 kills over 23 games in her 2023 freshman season, she also trains on the left pin. Smith missed the first half of last fall with a broken finger, but made it on the court for eight matches and has proven to be a solid blocker.

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST
An electric offensive performance carried South Carolina to a three-set sweep of eighth-ranked Tennessee in the 2023 regular season finale. The Gamecocks hit .488 as a team, the highest of any SEC team during conference play last fall, to overpower the Volunteers. Alayna Johnson led the way with a career-high 17 kills, hitting .464 along the way. The victory marked the sixth season in a row where South Carolina defeated a ranked opponent, extending the longest streak since joining the SEC in 1991. Tennessee is the third top-10-ranked team beaten during the streak, joining No. 5 Kentucky in 2021 and No. 4 Florida in 2020. Along with the new career high, Johnson’s 17 kills were the eighth-most for a three-set match in the rally scoring era.

South Carolina’s .488 hitting percentage as a team was the seventh-highest for a three-set match in the rally scoring era and third-highest against a SEC opponent. The last SEC match with a higher team hitting percentage was on Nov. 23, 2008 against Mississippi State (.536).

WHITESIDES CARRIES THE OFFENSE IN OCTOBER
The loss of senior Riley Whitesides to injury late last season came at an inopportune time for the Gamecocks, as the veteran pin was in the midst of one of the best months in her career during the month of October.

Along with her defensive role as a six-rotation left side, the Greenville native finished with more kills (103), digs (74) and service aces (8) in eight October matches than in any of the previous three seasons of her career. She also converted at an solid pace, with a .229 hitting percentage despite making 85 more attacks than anyone else on the team. Her previous hitting percentage high for the month was .234 over just four matches in the COVID-altered 2020 season. Her combined hitting percentage in 2021 and 2022 was under .200. The highlight of her month came against Alabama and at Auburn. Over the two games, Whitesides went off for 38 kills, 31 digs and a .387 hitting percentage in nine sets.

October ’20: 40 kills (.234 Hit%), 2 aces, 38 digs, Four games, 14 sets
October ’21: 80 kills (.205 Hit%), 1 ace, 48 digs, Nine games, 33 sets
October ’22: 67 kills (.152 Hit%), 6 aces, 54 digs, Seven games, 27 sets
October ’23: 103 kills (.229 Hit%), 8 aces, 74 digs, Eight games, 32 sets

The injury forced her out of two games completely, and even after she was able to play she was limited to a back-row-only role where she was unable to be part of the offense. Despite missing out on the final five games at 100 percent, Whitesides still put up career numbers for digs and led the team in service aces while coming just short of matching her kill total from her junior campaign. In the team’s six games against ranked opponents when she was healthy, Whitesides averaged 3.36 kills per set and her 84 total kills were 27 more than anyone else on the team.

GETTING THE SAND OUT OF THEIR SHOES
The indoor team has three indoor-to-beach crossover athletes on the roster this fall, with each Gamecock bringing a different background. The three crossovers are the most under head coach Tom Mendoza and are the most on a roster since the 2014 season.

Leading the way is Riley Whitesides, who moved from an indoor-only role to beach as her spring sport during the 2022-23 school year and broke out last season on the sand. She moved up to the top court by the end of the season and finished with a 20-15 overall record, culminating with a spot on the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association’s all-tournament team honors after defeating the top pairs from #17 GCU and #10 LSU at the conference tournament.

Jolie Cranford moves from a beach-only career to an indoor role, staying true to her roots. Cranford, a native of Colorado, played indoor exclusively until late in her high school career when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed her athletic pursuits outdoors. After picking up a passion for beach volleyball, she joined the Gamecocks for the spring 2023 beach season. Now two seasons in, she enters 2023-24 as the beach team’s winningest player on the active roster, holding a career mark of 41-21 through two seasons. Her .661 win percentage through two seasons currently ranks seventh in program history for Gamecocks with at least 50 career starts.

The final crossover athlete is Maggie Elliott. Originally committed to Florida State as both an indoor and beach athlete, the Charleston native opted to stay in-state for her collegiate career. As an indoor volleyball athlete, she played for her mother, Adria, and led her high school team in kills for all four years on the varsity roster.

GAMECOCK NATION PACKS THE GYM

Few venues feature the atmosphere of the Carolina Volleyball Center, and Gamecock fans came out in record-setting numbers last fall. The team had more games with 2,000 or more fans this season (5) than in the previous 49 seasons of volleyball at South Carolina combined (3) and six of the top-10 most-attended matches in program history came in the team’s first eight home games.

The Gamecocks currently rank 44th nationally for total attendance (23,114) and 43rd in average attendance (1,651 per game) despite having the smallest capacity gym of any team ranked ahead of it. The team broke the single-season home attendance record on Oct. 27 against Arkansas with 722 in attendance to push the season total to 19,230 fans, surpassing the previous record of 18,797, set during the 2018 season.

Dating back to 2014, the Gamecock volleyball program is averaging at least 1,000 fans per game every season.

RUPRICH REACHES ANOTHER MAJOR MILESTONE
Graduate student Ellie Ruprich became just the eighth woman in program history to reach 400 career blocks last fall, she is just the third woman in the modern scoring era (since 2001) to reach 400 career blocks, joining Darian Dozier (2012-15) and Mikayla Robinson (2017-21).

The Beverly Hills, Michigan native is still in the hunt of some rarely contested records. In the rally scoring record book, Ruprich surpassed Mikayla Robinson’s solo block record (now with 96). In the all-time record book, she ranks fifth for solo blocks, seventh in block assists and fifth in total blocks. Going off her career average of at least 100 blocks per season, Ruprich projects to land every rally-scoring era record by the end of her career and may be just the third woman in program history to reach 500 career blocks.

A GRAND PERFORMANCE
With a team-high 15 kills against No. 13 Kentucky on Nov. 3, 2023, Riley Whitesides surpassed 1,000 career kills. She is just the seventh woman since 2001 to reach 1,000, and only 16 other Gamecocks in the 50-season history of the program have reached the milestone. On Sept. 24, Whitesides also reached 1,000 career points in the team’s match at Missouri, making her the fourth Gamecock in the last decade and ninth overall since 2001 to reach that milestone.

HIGHS AND LOWS AT THE NET
South Carolina’s defensive call card remains at the net, as the Gamecocks finished fourth in the SEC with an average of 2.46 blocks per set last fall. For as good as the Gamecock block was, however, opponents were better. South Carolina opponents averaged 2.75 blocks per set when facing the Gamecocks, far and away the most in the SEC. The team allowed 10 or more blocks in 16 of its 27 games overall and nine of 18 conference games. The 2.75 blocks per set against them is the the highest single-season average for Gamecock opponents since the rally-scoring era began in 2001.

VOLLEYBALL FINALIZES STAFF FOR FALL
Head coach Tom Mendoza announced two changes for his coaching staff ahead of the start of year seven of his tenure.

Mendoza promoted Ethan Pheister to Associate Head Coach and hired Jimmy Kim as the team’s Technical Coordinator. Pheister is also preparing for his seventh season at South Carolina, serving predominantly as the team’s defensive coordinator. In his time with the Gamecocks, he has developed the team’s middle blockers into one of the best positional groups in the Southeastern Conference. In the modern scoring era (since 2001), he has trained four of the 11 student-athletes who have totaled 250 or more blocks, highlighted by Mikayla Robinson (2017-21) and Ellie Ruprich (2020-Present). The duo rank third and fifth, respectively, for total blocks in the program’s 50-year history. As a team, the Gamecocks have consistently ended the season in the top three of the SEC and top 50 nationally for average blocks per set during Pheister’s tenure.

“This is a title that is well deserved and probably overdue,” Mendoza said. “Ethan has been here for some of the best seasons in program history and is a driving force across many aspects of our program. He’s one of the top coaches in the country because of his dedication to helping our student-athletes develop and I’ve felt fortunate to keep him on staff for the last six seasons and hopefully many more successful years moving forward.”

Kim comes to South Carolina from UC Irvine. He began working with the UCI women’s volleyball program in 2022 as its technical coordinator, and added the same duties with the Anteater’s men’s program the following year. This summer, Kim also added Technical Coordinator duties for USA Volleyball, working with the national team during its run in the Volleyball Nations League.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Jimmy to the staff,” Mendoza said. “His work will be such an asset to our team and the players as we work to achieve our potential. Jimmy’s work on the men’s collegiate game and with USA Volleyball is going to bring great insight as we look for any way to improve or differentiate ourselves in a tightly competitive SEC. So many of our games the last few years were decided by one or two points and Jimmy is the type of person who works his tail off to find anything he can to help our team and players improve.”

STATUS QUO IN THE CLASSROOM
The program improved its streak to 15 seasons in a row earning the AVCA’s Team Academic Award, announced on July 17. The Gamecocks have put 10 or more individuals on the SEC’s Fall Academic Honor Roll for eight seasons in a row and placed 16 members on either the Fall or First-Year Academic Honor Rolls in the 2023-24 school year. This comes despite an ambitious list of majors that spans the world-renowned business school, sports science fields and education.

MENDOZA’S TRENDING TOPICS
In Head Coach Tom Mendoza’s tenure with the team…

Home is where the heart is. The Gamecocks are 57-25 (.714) at the Carolina Volleyball Center in Mendoza’s seven seasons.
September is the team’s best month, combining for a 33-16 mark. The highlight came in 2018 with a perfect 9-0 record in September, the first Gamecock squad since 1983 to do so.
The team is 73-13 when winning the first set, 17-62 when losing it.
In five-set matches, the team holds an 24-14 record. In the three years prior to his arrival, the Gamecocks were just 7-8 in five-setters.
The offense finished with a higher hitting percentage than its opponents 90 times and have lost just nine of those matches.
Aces have been a key to victory; under Mendoza the Gamecocks are 66-16 when matching or surpassing opponents in aces.
If the back line is locked in, the odds swing heavily in South Carolina’s favor; the team has a 48-11 record when finishing with more digs in a match since Mendoza arrived in 2018.

ALL TIME RECORDS

South Carolina holds an 877-700 (.556) all-time record, dating back to it’s first season as a varsity sport in 1974. The team’s 800th win came on Aug. 25, 2018 against Clemson.
The Gamecocks joined the SEC for volleyball in 1991, and have an all-time conference record of 234-323 (.420) in the 31st season as a member. The 200th SEC win came on Nov. 8, 2019 at Mississippi St.
The team has a 17-16 overall record in the opening game of SEC play.
In matches in the Carolina Volleyball Center, opened in 1996, Carolina is 247-136 (.645) overall and 128-117 (.525) in SEC matches. The CVC’s 200th win came on Nov. 16, 2018 against Ole Miss.
Tom Mendoza was introduced as the program’s 13th head coach on Jan. 3, 2018. This is his ninth season overall as a head coach, with a career record of 137-96 and a record of 90-78 at South Carolina. He has led his teams to the NCAA tournament in five of his eight years as a head coach and is just the fourth coach in South Carolina’s history to reach 75 career wins.