2017 Volleyball Schedule Revealed

2017 Schedule

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Home matches against defending national champion Stanford, NCAA runner-up and arch-rival Texas and perennial power and seven-time NCAA champion Penn State highlight Texas A&M's 26-match 2017 volleyball schedule, announced today by Aggie head coach Laurie Corbelli.

Fifteen matches, including six of the Aggies' eight preconference matches, will be played in the friendly confines of Reed Arena beginning with a season-opening two-day tournament against Sam Houston State, Texas State and Virginia Commonwealth on August 25-26. The last five matches of the preconference schedule are against teams that competed in the NCAA Championship tournament last year, and four of those contests are against opponents that were ranked in the top 10 in the American Volleyball Coaches Association's final Top 25 Poll.

"We seek out the best competition we can during the preconference schedule," said Corbelli, who is entering her 25^th season as head coach of the Aggies. "It is always about the process, and what better way to find out where you are than to play against some of the top volleyball programs in the nation."

Stanford and Penn State, the only two teams to compete in all 36 NCAA tournaments, come to College Station the following weekend and go head-to-head at Reed on Friday, Sept. 1. Texas A&M will face Penn State on Saturday, Sept. 2 at 4:30 p.m. and then take on the Cardinal, coming off its seventh NCAA championship, on Sunday, Sept. 3 at 11 a.m.

"It's going to be a phenomenal event," Corbelli said. "Both Penn State and Stanford have a very good chance of advancing to the Final Four, and I think we will have seven or eight All-Americans playing volleyball in Reed Arena over that weekend. There is no doubt you have to have great players to achieve what those programs have achieved, so I think our players will be very enthusiastic and will welcome the test that weekend brings.

"It is very unusual that you can get teams of that caliber on the same weekend to come, but I think they have heard really good things about Texas A&M and it shows that they have a lot of respect for the consistency of Aggie volleyball. We obviously have great respect for those programs, and we want to emulate them. That is a great learning opportunity for any player, and that is exactly what we try to do in the preconference schedule is learn."

The Aggies make their one and only road trip of the preconference schedule September 8-9 as they compete in the HotelRED Invitational in Madison, Wisconsin. Texas A&M opens against Lipscomb, which made its third consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament last year after winning the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament. Texas A&M concludes the tournament against Wisconsin, which lost to Stanford in the NCAA regionals finals last year and was No. 5 in the American Volleyball Coaches Association's final Top 25 Poll.

Texas A&M completes the preconference schedule against Texas on Wednesday, Sept. 13. It will be the first time the two teams have met in College Station since 2011, the Aggies' final season as a member of the Big 12 Conference.

"It's definitely not a cupcake schedule, but that's okay," Corbelli said. "You have to take the risks, and they are all teams that are so accomplished with such good volleyball players and good volleyball programs that we need to see that. I think it is really important that the team sees it and looks for the areas of success that we can have against those teams as we continue through our process of becoming what we want to be in November."

Texas A&M opens its challenging SEC schedule at LSU on Sept. 22. The Aggies' conference home opener is Sept. 24 against Missouri, the 2016 SEC co-champion along with Florida. Texas A&M, which went 15-3 in league play and tied Kentucky for third place in the SEC last year, is slated to face each of last year's top three finishers twice during the 18-match conference season.

"We will have seen just about the best volleyball that we can ask to see to prepare us for the really competitive SEC," Corbelli said. "There is not a night off during the conference schedule, and there are probably up to eight teams in the league that could finish in the top three or four in the standings. The athleticism in our conference only gets better. Players are getting bigger and stronger, and we just have a cadre of awesome coaches in the SEC that have great resources."

The Aggies, who have a rare five-match SEC homestand in October, close out the home season on Nov. 19 against South Carolina and wrap up the regular season at Alabama on Nov. 25.

Texas A&M returns 10 letterwinners, including All-American honorable mentions Kaitlyn Blake and Kiara McGee as well as 2016 AVCA South Region Freshman of the Year Hollann Hans, from last year's team that went 21-9 overall. The Aggies also will welcome a heralded recruiting class as they aim to make their sixth consecutive appearance in the 64-team NCAA Championship, which gets underway Nov. 30.

The Aggies report to campus August 7 and begin official preseason training on August 8. They will play an exhibition match at TCU in Fort Worth on August 19.

Season tickets for the 15 home matches will go on sale soon and will be available for purchase online at 12thManFoundation.com or by calling 888-99-AGGIE. Times of conference matches will be announced after the SEC reveals the television schedule later this summer.

Visit 12thMan.com for more information on Texas A&M volleyball. Aggie fans also can keep up to date with the A&M volleyball team on Facebook and on Twitter by following @AggieVolleyball.

Schedule

Players Mentioned

Kaitlyn Blake

Hollann Hans

Kiara McGee

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