By: SOU Sports Information
NAIA Championship First-Round Pairings
NAIA Championship Qualifiers
NAIA Top 25 Poll First look: College of the Ozarks (16-14) at SOU (22-5) - Saturday, 12 p.m.
*A complete preview of this NAIA first-round match will be published Wednesday
ASHLAND – A No. 17 ranking in Sunday's final NAIA top-25 poll made it official: Southern Oregon University is back in the NAIA volleyball playoffs.
In fact, the NAIA volleyball playoffs will be back in Southern Oregon on Saturday when College of the Ozarks (16-14 overall) visits the 17th-ranked Raiders (22-5) for a opening-round match at noon.
Tickets go on sale Tuesday morning at souraiders.com/tickets.
Following their Cascade Conference tournament semifinal loss, the Raiders dropped four spots in the rankings but still received the seventh of nine at-large bids to the 36-team NAIA playoffs. They qualified for the first time since 2011, and the home match will be their first since 2010.
Matchups for the first round were announced Monday. The Bobcats will travel from Point Lookout, Missouri, with the Midlands Collegiate Athletic Conference's automatic bid. They started their season 6-12 but went 7-1 in conference play and won a pair of matches for the MCAC tournament title.
The top 11 teams in the rankings, along with tournament host Briar Cliff (Iowa), get first-round byes to the final site – the Tyson Events Center in Sioux City, Iowa. The 24-team first round is taking place at 12 different campus sites.
The Raiders last made it to Sioux City in 2011 when they got through pool for the first time in program history. SOU has appeared in the NAIA Championships seven times before, which is more than 27 other teams in the field.
This is the Bobcats' third appearance in the NAIA Championships, their most recent being in 2009.
SOU, which shared a CCC regular-season title for the first time since 2010 by going 16-2, is 9-0 at home this season.
The meeting will be the first-ever between the Raiders and Bobcats.
Two other CCC teams will host in the first round: Eastern Oregon, which was the regular-season co-champ, is in the tournament for the first time against Menlo; and College of Idaho, the tournament champion, plays Cal State San Marcos. Concordia will be on the road against Vanguard.
College of Idaho earned the CCC's automatic bid into the playoffs by winning the conference tournament championship. Eastern Oregon, ranked 14th in the final poll, received an at-large bid to qualify for the first time in program history.
