7 p.m. Friday – #11 Eastern Oregon at SOU – Live Stream | Live Stats
5 p.m. Saturday – #25 College of Idaho at SOU – Live Stream | Live Stats

ASHLAND – For a Southern Oregon University volleyball team anxious to find out where it stands, two of the tallest measuring sticks in this part of the country are headed to town for the opening weekend of Cascade Collegiate Conference play.

The Raiders (2-2 overall) – set to play their home matches for the second year in a row at Ashland High's Mountain Avenue Gym while construction continues at SOU's new athletic facility, Lithia Motors Pavilion – will host the 11th-ranked Eastern Oregon Mountaineers (6-3) at 7 p.m. Friday and the 25th-ranked College of Idaho Yotes (8-0) at 5 p.m. Saturday. It's been two weeks since they completed the briefest pre-conference schedule in recent team history, defeating The Master's (Calif.) and Vanguard (Calif.) in five sets and losing to No. 14 Montana Tech and Morningside (Iowa) in four at the Summer Slam Invitational.

"I've been really happy with the way we've competed without really having any outside competition over the last week and a half," SOU head coach Josh Rohlfing said. "It's always difficult to emulate what you're going to see in a match in terms of nerves and all that, but I think we've come as close as we can."

First Impressions: Taylor Ristvedt, a 6-foot-2 right-side hitter, came out swinging at SOU's season-opening tournament. The redshirt-sophomore was stellar in 2016 during her freshman campaign, averaging two kills per set on a .171 attacking average. But at the Summer Slam, she flashed the potential to take on more of a starring role with a team-high 46 kills compared to just 15 errors, good for clips of 2.6 kills per set and a .244 average.

Several other Raiders within the new-look lineup impressed early, too. Freshman middles Elliott Cook (.294) and Makayla Hoyt (.278) were effective on the attack, but Hoyt also used her 6-2 frame to tally 20 blocks while the 6-1 Cook added 11. In the win against The Master's, they helped the Raiders to 17 blocks – the team's highest total since 2014. On the outsides, Malie Rube turned in a pair of 13-kill performances and Dani Johnson had one with 14.

Make Yourselves at Home: An obvious key to the Raiders improving on their fifth-place standing of a year ago will be their ability to capitalize at home, where they went 5-5 and dropped 12 of 14 sets against the top-four teams in the CCC. In the 10 seasons prior to 2016, SOU went 87-7 at home in conference play and was never swept in a weekend back-to-back.

The Rohlfing Files: SOU head coach Josh Rohlfing, now in his 11th season, enters the weekend with a career record of 219-81 over 300 career matches. His win percentage of .730 is tops all-time among SOU coaches and ranks ninth among active NAIA coaches. His teams have gone 12-10 against EOU and 11-16 against C of I; since he took over, no one other than SOU, EOU or C of I has won the CCC title.

About EOU:
– The Mountaineers are winners of three straight CCC regular-season championships (they shared one in 2014 with SOU) and captured the CCC tournament title last year for the first time. In the conference preseason poll, they were picked second behind Corban.
– Among their five returning starters are third-team NAIA All-American outside hitter Amanda Miller and honorable mention All-American middle Madisen Garlie, both seniors. Through nine matches, Miller leads the team at 3.1 kills per set and Garlie posts 2.0 with a conference-best average of 1.6 blocks per set.
– In non-conference play, they went 2-2 against top-25 teams and last weekend went 4-0 at the Big Sky Invitational, winning 12 of 14 sets.
– SOU leads the all-time series, 73-32, but dropped both meetings last year.
– Rohlfing on the Mountaineers: "They're just really physical. They finished top-6 (in the NAIA) last year and I think they have the potential to be in that range again. They play with so much intensity all the time and in order for us to compete, we have to match that."

About C of I:
– Like the Raiders, the Yotes are hoping for a bounce-back season of sorts. Though they went 20-10 overall and 14-6 in the CCC, last year was the first time since 2004 that they didn't pick up either a CCC tournament or regular-season title.
– Their current résumé rivals anyone in the NAIA – already including wins against the Nos. 7, 10, 20 and 23 teams in the preseason Top 25, each in three or four sets.
– As a team, they top the CCC with a .247 attacking average behind Brenna Meehan (3.4 kills/set, .175), Taylor Alexander (2.8, .231), Jackie Van Vliet (2.6, .415) and Alaina Slater (2.4, .312). Their setter, Marija Djonovic, a junior transfer from Montenegro, is averaging 12.2 assists.
– SOU leads the all-time series, 62-33, but dropped all three matchups last year, including one in the first round of the CCC tournament.
– Rohlfing on the Yotes: "I'm super impressed with them. They're one of the most well-rounded teams I've seen this year and they have to be in the conversation with EOU and Corban as one of the top teams on the West Coast. They're a lot bigger than they were in key spots last year and just have really good ball control and a great setter."