After season of learning, No. 19 BYU women's volleyball team to beat in Big 12

PROVO — Expectations breed confidence, and BYU women's volleyball was a confident group as the Cougars returned to practice ahead of the 2025 season.

But they also know they haven't done anything yet.

After finishing sixth in the Big 12 a year ago, the Cougars were targeted to win the Big 12 Tuesday with a returning veteran outside hitter named preseason player of the year and the Big 12 preseason freshman of the year after an internationally renowned summer.

BYU received six of the 15 first-place votes in the league, while Kansas (four), Arizona State (three), Utah (one) and TCU (one) picked up the rest in the vote of Big 12 head coaches who could not vote for their respective teams.

The Jayhawks are the highest-ranked Big 12 team in the AVCA preseason coaches' poll at No. 14, followed by No. 19 BYU, No. 20 Baylor, No. 23 Utah and No. 25 TCU.

Yet the ending to the 2024 campaign, when BYU went 19-10 including a 12-6 record in conference play before a disappointing 3-0 loss to Loyola Chicago in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, still motivates the Cougars. In other words, they've still got plenty to prove.

"Being there, playing in that game, I don't want to feel that feeling ever again," said setter Alex Bower, the rising sophomore who was named to the All-Big 12 preseason team alongside teammates Claire Little Chambers and Brielle Kemavor. "You don't want to hold that in your heart, but you also want to be motivated by it to work even harder.

"There are things that we could've done better at that time. We know it, and this year, we're driven to be better," she added. "I think every one of our girls just wants to win."

In the post-House settlement era — and the roster cuts that came to most college athletic programs that went with it — Bower is one of 12 returning players to the Cougars' roster, a group that also includes starting outside hitters Elli Mortensen and Little Chambers, the Big 12 preseason player of the year.

Kemavor and Mia Lee are also back at middle blocker, a group that picked up an unexpected — if not appreciated — late transfer in Elena Wallace, the former Mountain View High state champion and beach volleyball standout who returns home after two seasons at Tennessee Tech and a No. 5 final ranking in the country at Salt Lake Community College in 2021.

There are other standout newcomers, as well, like Suli Davis, the 6-foot-2 freshman outside hitter from Hau'ula, Hawai'i and Euless, Texas, with a long family history with BYU — her uncle Setema Gali was a star defensive end and Super Bowl champion, for one — and a long summer of international experience.

An Under Armour All-American and 2025 PrepVolleyball national player of the year, Davis — who put down 800 kills a senior at Coffeyville Heritage — spent the summer with the U.S. U19 national team that won silver at the World Championships in Osijek, Croatia, where she was also named Best Outside Hitter.

But beyond the Americans' fourth straight world medal, Davis also saw the trip to Netherlands and Serbia as an introduction to professional volleyball and the high-level collegiate game like she'll see in the Big 12.

"It's not a 9-5 job; it was more like 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.," she quipped. "That really helped me to understand what we're about to do and what we're about to go into."

Davis acknowledged she has a goal of winning AVCA national freshman of the year, an attainable mark for the experienced international athlete.

She'll have a veteran leader to guide her in Little Chambers, the former top-50 recruit from Temecula, California, who averaged 3.882 kills per season for 427 attacks to go with 235 digs, 48 blocks and 30 aces en route to All-Big 12 first-team honors and AVCA All-American honorable mention as a sophomore before she married middle blocker Gavin Chambers from the BYU men's team.

But like Bower, Little Chambers is still motivated by last year's sudden end to the season.

"We acknowledged it, and we're ready to move on," she said. "We don't want that to happen again; we were unsatisfied with last season. We want more, and we want to be consistently good to make through a better season.

"But we're hungry," she quickly added. "We want more."

Lulu Uluave, the rising sophomore libero from Hawaii who had 353 digs in 113 sets as a freshman, put it another way.

"We're fired up," Uluave said. "Nobody wanted to end that way, even though only one team in the NCAA is going to end with a win. It's just about how you react, and not the outcome.

"It's only driven us closer together. We figured out that the last game showed a lot of individuality, and we want to be better together and cohesive."

BYU opens the season Aug. 23 with a mid-afternoon exhibition game against Idaho State at Ogden High School (3 p.m. MDT first serve). The regular-season opener is Friday, Aug. 29 against Fairleigh Dickinson.

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