Northwestern University Athletics
Wildcats Announce 2004 Schedule
7/2/2004 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
July 2, 2004
EVANSTON, Ill. - Northwestern University has announced its volleyball schedule for the 2004 season, with a 30-match regular season which features nine opponents that participated in the 2003 NCAA Tournament and three September tournaments.
NU opens the regular season Sept. 3-4 at the Hilton Classic in Gainesville, Fla., hosted by the University of Florida. The Gators were the 2003 NCAA runner up, falling to champion USC 3-1. TCU and Miami (Ohio) are also participants in the Classic.
The Wildcats will again take part in the Chicago Challenge, hosted by Loyola University. Chicago rivals DePaul and UIC will also be at the tournament, which will be held Sept. 10-11 at Loyola. Following that, senior setter and captain Drew Robertson will get her chance to play close to home in a mid-week match at Long Beach State in California. That west-coast trip will wrap up the travel portion of the 2004 nonconference schedule.
Northwestern will close out the non-conference schedule with its own Wildcat Classic, to be held Sept. 17-18 at Welsh-Ryan Arena. This year, NU will host Villanova, Western Kentucky and Stanford. NU has never faced Stanford, a No. 5 seed in the 2003 NCAA's, or Western Kentucky, but holds a 1-0 edge over Villanova.
The 'Cats start the Big Ten schedule with four straight home matches -- in fact, they are home six times in the first eight contests. The schedule begins with perennial power Penn State (Sept. 24) and Ohio State (Sept. 25). The flip side of the schedule is that Northwestern will face a challenge in November, as six of eight matches will be played away from Evanston. The Wildcats will be at Indiana (Nov. 26) and Purdue (Nov. 27) to close out the regular season.
NCAA Tournament play begins on Dec. 3 and concludes with the championship match on Dec. 18. Northwestern will look to extend its current streak of two consecutive NCAA appearances with another showing in 2004.
