KU Jayhawks volleyball reaches Sweet 16 with second straight upset over ranked foe

Kansas City-area product Caroline Bien tied a career-high with 21 kills, powering unranked Kansas volleyball to a 3-1 victory (25-13, 26-24, 19-25, 25-22) over host and 14th-ranked Creighton on Friday night in the NCAA Round of 32 at D.J. Sokol Arena in Omaha, Nebraska.

The win gives the Jayhawks their third Sweet 16 berth in program history and first since 2015.

This also was KU’s second straight upset; the previous night, KU swept 19th-ranked Oregon to advance in bracket play.

“We’re riding a pretty good wave right now,” KU coach Ray Bechard said.

Bien — the Big 12 freshman of the year and graduate of St. Thomas Aquinas in Overland Park — added nine digs and two blocks. Jenny Mosser posted 16 kills, while Lansing, Kansas native Caroline Crawford contributed eight.

“I think going in, everyone just thought, ‘Why not us?’” Crawford said.

Added KU sophomore Kennedy Farris, from Leavenworth: “I think just being the underdog, we have nothing to lose — playing with an open mind and letting people think we can’t do it. Proving people wrong, who doesn’t love that?”

Friday’s result was a reversal of what happened to the two teams in 2016. That year, KU was the higher-seeded team and host when it lost in the Round of 32 to Creighton, 3-2, at Horejsi Center in Lawrence.

“I’ll tell you what: In ‘16, we carried around the expectations of the volleyball world we felt like,” Bechard said, “We were a lot freer mind tonight.”

KU, now 18-11, will play the winner of third-seeded Pittsburgh and Penn State on Thursday, Dec. 9 at a to-be-determined location. Those two squads face each other on Saturday at Pittsburgh.

The Jayhawks, with Friday’s victory, also became the first NCAA Tournament team to knock off a national seed this year.

“We had to earn it, and our team fought hard,” Bechard said of his team’s win over Creighton. “So I was just happy that a team that does it the right way was going to advance, and certainly, we’re thrilled that it was the Jayhawks.”