Set Point #1: The dawn of year three

This is the first edition of Northwestern’s weekly volleyball column Set Point. It will analyze and react to every part of the ‘Cats’ season from exhibition games to the end-of-year conference tournament.

Year one under Tim Nollan didn’t go to plan. Northwestern went 5-23 and oftentimes looked like it wasn’t playing the same sport as the top dogs of the Big Ten.

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Year two under Nollan was a different story. NU won 17 games, including seven conference victories, and picked itself up off the Big Ten doormat.

Year three under Nollan will define where the program is going. Can the Wildcats sustain a competitive level of play, or is their rightful place the darkness of the conference basement?

In many ways, 2026 is a make-or-break year for a program desperately trying to shatter the surface and stay above water. Following the departure of eight players from last season’s team, the ‘Cats have their work cut out for them to stay afloat.

But what does that mean?

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The bare minimum for this season should be making the inaugural Big Ten Conference Tournament. The top 15 teams in the conference standings at the end of the year will qualify for the tournament, while the Big Ten’s bottom three will stay home in shame.

Last season, Northwestern would have been the second-to-last team to secure a postseason bid, finishing 14th with a conference record of 7-13. Iowa, which finished 15th and would have been the last to qualify in 2025, won 30% of its conference games with six victories. As the conference is shrinking from 20 to 17 Big Ten games this season, a floor of 30% to make the tournament means the ‘Cats must win at least five or six conference games this season.

6-11 seems like an incredibly achievable record, until you factor in the projected strength of the Big Ten this year. The 2026 AVCA preseason poll has eight Big Ten teams ranked in its top 25, including four in the top 10. To make things worse, NU travels to face six of the eight ranked teams on the road—…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/set-point-1-dawn-three-171314318.html

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Publish date : 2026-08-21 17:13:00

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