TEMPE – Back on the road this weekend, No. 9 Sun Devil Volleyball is off to Texas, first playing two matches in the Texas State Invitational on Thursday and Friday before heading to Austin for a top-10 matchup at No. 2 Texas on Sunday on ESPN2.
How to Follow
Thursday’s matchup at Texas State will start at 4 p.m. MST/6 p.m. CDT and will be on ESPN+. There will be no stream for Friday’s match against Incarnate Word, only live stats. That game will be at 12 p.m. MST/2 p.m. CDT. The weekend will conclude at No. 2 Texas, which will be live on ESPN2. That top-10 matchup will start at 12 p.m. MST/2 p.m. CDT.
There will be live stats for all three matches. Updates will be provided on social media on X (@SunDevilVB) and Instagram (@sundevilvolleyball).
Sun Devil Outlook
Arizona State (4-1)
- The Sun Devils hosted the Nore-Stahl Classic over the weekend, beating Florida Gulf Coast and Loyola Marymount and the first home matches of the season.
- Graduate middle blocker Colby Neal was named the MVP of the Nore-Stahl Classic after a stellar weekend. She had a team-best 17 blocks, and against FGCU, she had a season-high eight blocks. She also reached double figures in kills for the first time this year against the Eagles with 10 on a .429 clip. In the NCAA rankings, Neal is ranked No. 11 for blocks per set with 1.65.
- As a team, Arizona State has been putting up big block numbers. In all four of the wins this season, ASU has notched double-digit blocks. The season high is 14 in the upset over then-No. 2 Penn State.
- With a No. 9 ranking this week, ASU has been ranked in 29-consecutive polls, which is tied for the longest streak in program history (2014-15). During this streak, the Sun Devils have been ranked in the top 10 six times, with the highest ranking being No. 7 in last week’s poll.
Opponent Outlook
- Texas State (3-2) played in the Southwest Showdown over the weekend, going 2-1 with wins over UTRGVU and Texas A&M - Corpus Christi. The lone loss came against UTEP. In the series history between ASU and Texas State, the Sun Devils lead 3-1.
- Incarnate Word (3-3) competed in the BYU Nike Invitational last weekend, beating Northern Colorado in five sets and falling to BYU and Wichita State. This will be the first meeting between ASU and IWU.
- Texas (4-0) has had a strong start to the season, with three of its four wins coming against ranked teams and two of the wins coming against top-10 teams. On Sunday, Texas beat then-No. 6 Stanford in five sets in Austin. In the all-time series against Texas, ASU is 1-5. ASU’s last win over Texas came in 2013 at the Illini Classic when the Longhorns were ranked No. 2 and the Sun Devils were unranked.