NCAA volleyball: More TV news; AVCA honors Cook; big tourney set

As we wait for the start of the NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship national semifinals, notes, notes, notes …

We have a TV update from Larry Hamel, Nebraska’s John Cook is the AVCA national coach of the year, and there’s going to be a heck of a volleyball tournament in Milwaukee in September.

We will have match stories soon after the conclusion of the Nebraska-Pittsburgh and Wisconsin-Texas matches.

VBM’s Hamel on regionals TV

It’s time again to crunch the positive TV numbers that continued to pour in for NCAA women’s volleyball, on this occasion in the four NCAA Tournament round-of-eight matches telecast throughout the day and night Saturday on the third-tier cable channel ESPNU.

In the Nielsen ratings reported on Tuesday by the Sports Media Watch site, the audiences for those four matches gained 32.7% in a year-to-year comparison with the quartet that aired on ESPNU on December, 10. 2022.

Here’s a breakdown of the total-average viewerships from Saturday (with the start time for the ESPNU telecast in parentheses): Wisconsin-Oregon, 379,000…