The NCAA Championships continue this weekend with the Round of 16 on Friday and the Elite 8 on Saturday. ESPN has all the coverage, which means for online viewing it will be WatchESPN for those in the States and ESPNPlayer for those of us abroad.

Here are the match-ups for Friday:

05:00 PM ET #2 Texas #15 vs. Colorado State
05:00 PM ET #4 Wisconsin vs. Ohio State
06:00 PM ET #1 Stanford vs. Oregon State
07:00 PM ET #5 Penn State vs. #12 UCLA
07:00 PM ET #7 North Carolina vs. #10 Oregon
07:00 PM ET #6 Florida State vs. BYU
08:00 PM ET #8 Florida vs. #9 Illinois
09:30 PM ET #3 Washington vs. #14 Nebraska

I think the Washington-Nebraska and Penn State-UCLA will probably get a lot of attention seeing as they’re match-ups of former champions. I will be interested to see how North Carolina does against Oregon. The Oregon offense is quite fun to watch – very fast!

You can see the full bracket here.

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John Forman
John Forman

John is currently the Talent Strategy Manager (oversees the national teams) and Indoor Performance Director for Volleyball England, as well as Global Director for Volleyball for Nation Academy. His volleyball coaching experience includes all three NCAA divisions, plus Junior College, in the US; university and club teams in the UK; professional coaching in Sweden; and both coaching and club management at the Juniors level. He's also been a visiting coach at national team, professional club, and juniors programs in several countries. Learn more on his bio page.

    5 replies to "Stoked for the next round of NCAA matches"

    • Oliver Wagner

      I have not seen any game of the Ducks yet. But what you wrote about their offense reminds me on Chip Kelly’s fast offense with Oregon’s football team 🙂 I would be interested to see how that works in volleyball.

      • John Forman

        One of their plays is to run the OPP to run a straight quick in front of the setter, the MB to run a spread quick (31), and the OH to hit a fast set (2nd tempo) ball at the pin. You don’t see OPPs running play sets these days the way they used to.

        • Oliver Wagner

          If you have the personnel for this. The good thing for the hitter is: It is just one set. Who ever has the chance can hit it 🙂

        • Oliver Wagner

          P.S. What are they doing in out-of-system situations? How fast do they play?

          • John Forman

            I don’t remember specifically. There obviously are limits when you’re out of system, but generally they like to play up-tempo.

Please share your own ideas and opinions.