Loyola Chicago and Ole Miss made first-round history Thursday as the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball tournament began.

Loyola, which caught everyone’s attention when it upset Dayton in the finals of the Atlantic 10 tournament, not only upset BYU, the fifth-seeded team in the Louisville region, but also defeated the Cougars of the Big 12 to claim first place NCAA win in program history.

Ole Miss, an SEC at-large, won by five sets against No. 7 seed Florida State of the ACC in the Penn State Regional. It was also that program’s first NCAA win.

Line of the Day: Georgia Tech’s Tamara Otene had a career-best 33 kills and had one assist, 15 digs and a .400 block mark in the Yellow Jackets’ five-set win over Tennessee.

The two rare first-round upsets made for a busy Friday with seven games in the second round – including Loyola against Purdue and Ole Miss against Creighton – and 14 more games in the first round.

The NIVC continued on Thursday and we also have those results in this All-NCAA postseason edition of Volleyball Today:

NCAA Volleyball Friday

Every NCAA game can only be seen on ESPN+. We recommend the whiparound show “The Fifth Set” to keep up with the action, as the NCAA and ESPN refuse to start early in the day to spread out the games. Click here for a link to the schedule that adjusts to the time zone you are in.

The top four seeds begin when Pittsburgh plays Morehead State, Nebraska plays Florida A&M, Penn State plays Delaware State and Louisville plays Chicago State.

The No. 2 seeds feature Creighton vs. Ole Miss, Wisconsin vs. Georgia Tech, SMU vs. Missouri and Stanford vs. Sacramento State.

Illinois plays Northern Iowa, UTEP plays Oklahoma, NC State plays Florida, Yale plays North Carolina, South Dakota State plays Miami, Colorado State plays Texas A&M, USC plays Texas, Washington plays LMU, Colgate plays Kansas, Minnesota plays Kentucky, Dayton plays Baylor , Georgia Tech plays Wisconsin, New Hampshire plays Arizona State, TCU plays Oregon and Marquette plays Utah.

The NIVC schedule includes second-round games between Omaha vs. DePaul, UConn vs. East Carolina, Utah Valley vs. Wyoming and Arkansas State vs. Stephen F. Austin. First-round games include Weber State vs. Pacific, Northern Colorado vs. App State and Southeast Missouri State vs. Georgia Southern.

NCAA volleyball on Thursday

Loyola (22-11) won its 13th straight game with the win BYU (19-10) at Purdue. The Ramblers, who had lost just two sets during the run, overwhelmed BYU by a score of .164, 25-20, 25-21, 25-17. Read the Loyola recap here and the BYU recap here.

Ole Miss (18-11) pulled off an upset 20-25, 25-18, 23-25, 27-25, 15-13 State of Florida (21-10) at Creighton. This is Ole Miss’ first trip to the second round after four previous attempts. Payton Brgoch led the Rebels with 19 kills and a .500 hitting mark, followed by one assist and eight blocks.

Click here for the Ole Miss recap and here for the Florida State story.

Almost every other game was a sweep, but not the ACC’s Georgia Tech (21-9) wild five-set win over Tennessee (15-12) of the SEC. Tamara Otene posted a career-best performance of 33 kills in games 25-18, 13-25, 32-30, 26-28, 15-12. She hit .400 and had one assist, 15 digs and one block. Teammate Bianca Bertolino had 25 kills, four assists, one ace and 15 digs. Tennessee’s Nina Cajic had 27 kills, hit .338 and had two assists, two aces, 11 digs and six blocks, a solo…

Two more games went to four. Minnesota (21-1) ousted the Big Ten Western Kentucky (28-7) of Conference USA at Kentucky, breaking the Toppers’ 24-game winning streak… Dayton (30-2) of the Atlantic 10, which should have had a top-16 seed, beat the SEC South Carolina (16-12) in four games at Baylor as Lexie Almodovar had 22 kills, four aces, 13 digs and a block. South Carolina’s Riley Whitesides had 22 kills, an ace, eight digs and a block…

The winners of the competition: USC above UT Arlington, Missouri above Texas State, Purdue above West Michigan, Marquette above FGCU, TCU above Hawaii, Texas above Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Kentucky above Cleveland State, Creighton above South Dakota, SMU above Wichita State, Wisconsin above Fairfield, Baylor above Wofford, Utah above College of Charleston And Oregon above climax.

Notable performances: Purdue’s Eva Hudson had 21 kills with one error in 44 swings to hit .455, with seven digs and five blocks; TCU’s Melanie Parra had 24 kills, hit .302 and an ace, seven digs and four blocks, one solo; Madi Skinner of Texas had 15 kills, hit .444 and had 11 digs and three blocks, one solo; Kentucky’s Brooklyn DeLeye had 15 kills, a .481 hitting percentage and an assist, three aces, five digs and a block; Anna Smrek of Wisconsin had 14 kills with one error on 19 attacks and five blocks; Oregon’s Ony Ofoegbu had 12 kills without an error in 16 at-bats to hit .750 and had three digs.

NIVC Thursday

In a second round game Bowling Green of the MAC defeated Wright State of the Horizon League 25-18, 13-25, 25-23, 25-17 as Lauryn Hovey had 16 kills, hit .333 and had one assist, one block and seven digs. Mia Tyler had 14 kills, hit .400 and had a dig and four blocks, a solo…

Utah Valley swept Washington State as Avery Shewell had 12 kills with one error in 19 attacks to hit .519 and score two aces… Wyomingwhich showed that it can win if it doesn’t give up, beats State of Idaho in four… State of Arkansas hit UTRGV in four, as Kaitlin Whitlock had 10 kills, 18 digs and two blocks, a solo… SFA swept Jackson State … Omaha hit Linden wood in five behind 19 kills from Kali Jürgenmeister, who hit .357 and had five blocks and a dig… Jill Pressly had 21 kills as DePaul swept ToledoShe is batting .318 with one assist, all four of her team’s aces, two blocks and five digs… UConn swept Mercer … East Carolina hit Winthrop in four, as four players had 11 kills each, including Carlia Northcross, who was flawless on 17 swings, an ace, two digs and six blocks, as well as a solo.