Indiana volleyball will travel to Corpus Christi, Texas to compete in the Islanders Classic. The Hoosiers will have a busy weekend as they are scheduled to play three matches in just over 24 hours.
SMU head coach Sam Eger is in her first season with the Mustangs, who were picked to finish third in the American Athletics Conference. SMU is off to a strong start, finishing 2-1 in Dallas at the Doubletree Invitational last weekend.
The Hoosiers will endure a long day of commuting to the Lone Star State before arriving at the Islanders Classic. One of Indiana’s biggest challenges will be managing the day of travel and the tough competition on the road, head coach Steve Aird said.
The Hoosiers finished the Indiana Invitational this past weekend and plan to use the experience they gained moving forward.
[Related: Indiana volleyball goes 2-1 in Indiana Invitational over the weekend]
“It was awesome to play other teams, '' Aird said. “We learned a lot about what we do well and what we have to get better at. The goal is to always just keep improving as the season goes on.”.
Aird said one of the difficulties of preseason tournaments is the multiple matches in unfamiliar settings. There will be a lot of high quality volleyball played this weekend against three really good teams on the road, Aird said Tuesday at a press conference.
Despite the foreseeable obstacles, Aird said he was confident in his team and its ability to perform this weekend. Aird said the practices this week have included drills to help his team dial in areas of potential improvement and master its strengths. Still, Indiana’s goal stays consistent.
“The goal is to win,” Aird said. “We want to show up and play really high level volleyball. We want to win more matches than we lose.”
Indiana will aim to take the experiences they learned from the Indiana Invitational and apply them to this weekend, when they face SMU, Sam Houston State University, and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Indiana’s first matchup is against Southern Methodist University at 5 p.m ET Friday. The second matchup will be against SHSU at 11:30 a.m. Saturday and the final match will be later that night at 7:30 p.m. against TAMU-CC. The first two matches will not be televised and the final match will be broadcasted on ESPN+.
