Chris Tamas, an assistant at Nebraska the past two seasons, is the new Illinois women’s coach.
Illinois announced the hire on Friday morning and will introduce Tamas, a former pro player, at an afternoon news conference. He replaces Kevin Hambly, who left Illinois to take the job at Stanford.
A couple of former big-time NCAA women have taken jobs as assistant coaches.
And in NCAA men’s volleyball on Thursday, No. 8 Stanford upset No. 4 UCLA and top-ranked Ohio State won again.
But first a look at Friday’s men’s schedule.
The MPSF has three matches that could shake things up on Friday night as No. 3 BYU (9-2, 4-1) heads to USC (3-8, 2-6), No. 5 Hawai’i (10-2, 3-2) plays at upstart UC San Diego (5-5, 2-4, which is riding a five-match winning streak, and No. 2 Long Beach State (9-2, 5-1), atop the standings, goes to No. 7 UC Irvine 8-4, 5-3).
The MIVA shows No. 11 Ball State (10-2, 3-1) going to Fort Wayne (4-10, 1-2) and Grand Canyon (5-5, 3-1) at Quincy (3-6, 1-2).
There are three matches in the EIVA with all three home teams opening league play. No. 14 Penn State (6-4, 1-0 EIVA) is at NJIT (4-4, 0-0), Saint Francis (4-6, 0-1) goes to Princeton (2-5, 0-0), and Charleston (7-3, 0-1) is at Sacred Heart (7-1, 0-0).
Four Conference Carolinas matches are on the Friday schedule, including Mount Olive (5-4, 4-0) at King 7-1, 3-0) in the battle for first place. Barton (5-3, 4-1) goes to Lees-McRae (3-5, 1-2) and Pfeiffer (0-4, 0-4) is at Limestone (3-2, 3-1). Belmont Abbey (3-5) goes out of the league when it plays host to Alderson Broaddus (1-9), which beat St. Joseph’s College this past Sunday for its first victory.
Illinois tabs Tamas: Tamas’s resume includes nine years as a college assistant, including two years at Nebraska, two at Cal Poly, two at Minnesota and two at UC-Riverside.
He played at Pacific, where he was an AVCA All-American in 2003 and then spent time with the national team. His wife, Jennifer, was a four-time All-American middle at Pacific. They have two children.
Tamas is the second assistant to leave Nebraska. Earlier, Dani Busboom Kelly took the job as head coach at Louisville. She was replaced for Olympic libero and former Husker Kayla Banwarth.
All-American volunteers: Former Missouri All-American setter Molly Kreklow has gone back to her alma mater as a volunteer coach. Former Penn State All-American Deja McClendon, who is from Louisville, has joined the aforementioned Busboom Kelly’s staff as a volunteer.
Cardinal goes five to beat UCLA: UCLA lost for the third consecutive time as Stanford won a thriller on its home court 29-27, 25-27, 23-25, 29-27, 15-11.
Sophomore outside hitter Jordan Ewert had a career-high 22 kills on .439 hitting to go with two blocks and two digs as Stanford improved to 7-4, 4-2 MPSF. Mason Tufuga added 19 kills and five digs and hit .394. But he also had five of Stanford’s 25 service errors with just three aces, two by Kevin Rakestraw.
UCLA dropped to 9-4, 6-3 in the only regular-season meeting between the two teams this season. The Bruins also had three aces, two by JT Hatch, but a whopping 29 errors, meaning the teams combined for six aces and 54 errors.
Hatch led UCLA with 19 kills and hit .297. He had eight of those service errors to go with seven digs.
Dylan Missry added 13 kills and five digs, but had five serve errors. Hagen Smith had 12 kills, hit .429, and five blocks and five digs.
Buckeyes, Loyola notch wins: Ohio State improved to 12-0, 3-0 MIVA, with its 25-13, 20-25, 25-14, 25-17 over visiting No. 6 Lewis.
Miles Johnson continued to dominate as he came away with 19 kills and hit .593 and had two digs and two blocks. Nicolas Szerszen added 15 kills and hit .565. He had three aces, eight digs and two blocks. Driss Guessous had 10 kills and hit .533 and had four blocks, Their team, which won for the 35th time in a row, hit .485.
Maxime Hervoir had with seven kills, five blocks — two solo — and an ace.
Lewis (8-3, 3-2), which hit .263, got nine kills from Trevor Weiskircher and eight each from Mitch Perinar and Kyle Bugee.
Loyola won for the fourth time in a row by beating McKendree 25-23, 25-16, 25-22. The 10th-ranked Ramblers improved to 7-3, 3-0. while McKendree dropped to 5-9, 1-3.
Loyola, which goes to Ohio State on Saturday, got eight kills apiece from Ben Plaisted and Collin Mahan, who had seven digs. Plaisted had four blocks and both of his team’s aces.
Jeff Jendryk had seven kills and hit .500 and had six blocks.
Maalik Walker led the home team with 13 kills but hit .097. Nolan Reuter added 10 kills and Wyatt Patterson seven. He had both his team’s aces, but McKendree had 15 service errors.
Also in the MIVA on Thursday, Lindenwood dropped to 0-10 with a 24-26, 25-23, 25-17, 25-18 loss to visiting Missouri Baptist.
