Florida State Beach Volleyball earns No. 3 seed for NCAA Beach Volleyball Championships

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Seminoles.com) — The Florida State beach volleyball team will hold the No. 3 seed in the fifth edition of the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship. Florida State opens the tournament against sixth-seeded Stanford on Friday, May 7 at 1:00 pm ET.

“We are so excited to just get this NCAA Tournament started and see the selections for the bracket,” said head coach Brooke Niles. “We can now really prepare for the teams in front of us and the first team is Stanford. Their assistant coach Angela Rock and I go way back. I played with their head coach, Andrew Fuller’s wife for a few years internationally and he actually coached us some. I think we are all really familiar with each other and they have great players and we have great players. It is going to be a really good battle. We are just really excited to get started.”

Florida State is the only program in the nation to make an appearance in every national championship event, starting with the AVCA Championship (2012-15) and now the NCAA Championship (2016-19, 2021). FSU finished as the national runner-up in 2014, 2016 and 2018. The Noles also posted back-to-back top-three finishes in 2012 and 2013.

“It means a lot for the culture of Florida State to be the only team to make every AVCA and NCAA Tournament,” said Niles. “We don’t want to be thought of as just another east coast school, we want to compete for a national championship every year and getting there is half of the battle. Getting selected every year is an important stepping stone to where we want to be.”

The Seminoles head into the national championship riding a streak of 10 consecutive victories, and just two weeks after claiming the team’s fifth consecutive CCSA Championship. Florida State is the only beach volleyball program in the country to win five straight conference championships.

FSU saw 16 opponents ranked in the AVCA Top-10 this season with 13 wins, and played 25 matches against teams ranked in the Top-20 with a 21-4 record in those matches. The Seminoles only lost to one team that did not make the NCAA Tournament and posted sweeps in 17 matches this season without being swept once.

The 2021 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship will feature a double elimination, bracket play tournament with the two remaining schools playing a winner-take-all match on Sunday at 1:30 pm ET.

The 2021 Beach Volleyball Championship provides for a field of eight teams to compete in a double-elimination tournament. The NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Committee conducts team selections, selecting the top three teams from the East Region and the top three teams from the West Region. The remaining two teams are selected at-large from across the country by the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Committee.

FSU vs. the NCAA Championship Field:

• 49-24 record against all opponents
  • UCLA (28-3): 7-10
    • Last meeting: The Bruins defeated the Seminoles 4-1 and 3-2 earlier this season in Los Angeles.
    • Postseason: The two teams have met five times in the NCAA Championship. FSU won the first three matches before losing in the championship match in 2018. UCLA won 3-0 in 2019.
  • USC (26-4): 5-13
    • Last meeting: The teams split their two matches this season in Los Angeles. USC won the first match 4-1. Florida State won the second match 3-2 with wins on courts one, two and three.
    • Postseason: The two teams have met four times at the NCAA Championship. USC has won three of the four meetings, including a 3-0 win in the National Championship in 2016. FSU got the best of USC in 2018 with a 3-1 win. USC won the meeting in 2019 3-1.
  • LSU (25-7): 14-1
    • Last meeting: Florida State and LSU have met four times this season, all resulting in FSU wins. The two teams last met in the CCSA Championship Match, where FSU won 3-2 with wins on courts two, three and four.
    • Postseason: The two teams have never met in a national championship event, but have now seen each other six times in the CCSA Championship with FSU winning every meeting, including two this season.
  • Stanford (23-11):0-0
    • Florida State and Stanford have never met before in beach volleyball.
  • LMU (29-6): 6-0
    • Last meeting: Florida State defeated LMU 4-1 in Tallahassee the first week of the season.
    • Postseason: The two teams have never met in the postseason.
  • Cal Poly (23-9): 5-0
    • Last meeting: Florida State defeated Cal Poly 5-0 in Tallahassee the first week of the season.
    • Postseason: Florida State and Cal Poly met for the first time at the NCAA Tournament in the first round of the 2019 Tournament. The Seminoles won 3-0.
  • TCU (26-8): 12-0
    • Last meeting: The Seminoles took down the Horned Frogs four times this season. FSU defeated TCU 3-2 and 4-1 when they met in Gulf Shores on April 18.
    • Postseason: The two teams have met once in the CCSA Tournament in 2019, resulting in a 5-0 FSU win.

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