California volleyball returns to action at Haas Pavilion this week, hoping to snap a four-match losing skid by welcoming a pair of ACC foes – No. 14 Miami and Florida State – to Berkeley for the first time in history.
 
Thursday's match will be the team's annual Dig Pink® contest, which is dedicated to raising awareness and funds for breast cancer research in partnership with the Side-Out Foundation. Prior to first serve on Saturday, the Bears will celebrate alumna Hana Cutura, the 2009 Pac-10 Player of the Year and three-time All-American who will be inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame later that evening.
 
Last weekend, the Golden Bears lost in four to both Syracuse and Boston College on the road but produced some standout performances. Cal posted 17.0 blocks against the Orange, the most by any Cal team in a four-set match since 2013 and the most in four sets by any ACC team this season. Mikayla Hayden recorded her first-career double-double in that match with 17 kills on .412 hitting and 10 blocks to become the fifth Bear in history to reach double-digit stops in a four-set match, then followed that up with a 12-kill (.417), five-block outing against the Eagles. Ashley Li also had the night of her life at Syracuse, reaching a career-best 17 kills (.452) and six blocks.
 
Vs. No. 14 Miami (15-2, 5-1 ACC): Thursday, Oct. 16 – 7 p.m. PT (Berkeley)
Tickets
Live Stream: ACCNX
Live Stats: StatBroadcast
Last Meeting: Nov. 3, 2024 (at Miami – Miami won 3-0)
Bears vs. Hurricanes All-Time Record: 0-1
 
The Hurricanes won 15 straight matches, including a five-set thriller against No. 4 Pitt last weekend, before dropping their first ACC contest of the season to No. 10 SMU on Sunday. As a team, they rank second in the nation and lead the ACC with 2.32 service aces per set and are Division I's No. 23 team in blocks per set (2.65), holding opponents to just .176 on the year Flormarie Heredia Colon, a 2024 All-American who has been named the ACC Offensive Player of the Week three times this season, leads the country with an average of 5.42 kills per set (5.90 in ACC play) and ranks 13th overall with 0.58 service aces per set. Teammate Dahlia Wilson is dominant at the net with 1.45 blocks per set (tied for 12th in the nation) and a .348 hitting percentage, while setter Ariana Rodriguez is the No. 3 player in Division I at the service line with her 0.71 ace-per-set average.
 
Vs. Florida State (8-7, 2-4 ACC): Saturday, Oct. 18 – 4 p.m. PT (Berkeley)
Tickets
Live Stream: ACCNX
Live Stats: StatBroadcast
Last Meeting: Nov. 1, 2024 (at Florida State – Florida State won 3-0)
Bears vs. Seminoles All-Time Record: 1-3
Current Streak: Florida State won last two
Last Cal Win: Nov. 30, 1989 (3-1)
 
The Seminoles are fielding nine freshmen on this year's squad and boast three upperclassmen (outside hitters ane Henke and Kyleen Filimaua and libero Mio Yamamoto) who rank among the ACC's top 10 in at least one statistical category. Henke is Division I's 24th-ranked player in kills per set (4.43) and ranks fourth in the ACC with 0.43 service aces per set, while Filimaua averages a 10th-place 3.63 kills per set with an improved 3.88 kills-per-set average in ACC play. Yamamoto commands the defense with 3.60 digs per set on the year (10th in the ACC) and has shifted into another gear since the start of conference play with a pace of 4.08 digs per set. As a team, however, Florida State ranks among the bottom-two teams in the conference with an average of 0.71 service aces per set over the past three weeks. The Seminoles will arrive in Berkeley coming off a brutal stretch of three-straight national Top-10 opponents, having lost to No. 10 SMU and No. 4 Pitt last weekend and facing No. 5 Stanford on Thursday.
 
INTO THE HALL
Cal Athletics will induct former Golden Bear Hana Cutura into its Hall of Fame on Saturday as the eighth Cal volleyball player to receive the honor. Cutura, who played in Berkeley from 2006-09, is the only Cal player to surpass 2,000 career kills (2,004) and posted 628 as a senior, second only to fellow Cal Hall of Famer Mia Jerkov on the program's single-season list. She was thrice named an AVCA All-American (2007-09) and helped lead the Bears to four straight NCAA Tournaments, including the team's first Final Four appearance in 2007 (a year in which she was also named the NCAA Tournament Gainesville Regional MVP). Cutura was named the Pac-10 Player of the Year in 2009, becoming just the second Bear in history (Sylvie Monnet, 1983) to receive a conference player of the year award.
 
FOREVER NO. 1
For the first time in program history, the Bears retired the jersey of one of their legends as 2010 American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) National Player of the Year Carli Lloyd had her No. 1 raised into the rafters before the Bears' ACC home opener against Louisville on Oct. 3. An outstanding setter, Lloyd finished her collegiate career (2007-10) with 5,697 assists – sixth-most in Pac-10 history – and 1,094 digs as well as three AVCA All-America honors, leading the Bears to four straight NCAA Tournament appearances, two Final Fours (2007, 10) and an NCAA title match (2010). Also a dominant attacker, Lloyd holds the program record for the three highest hitting percentages in a four-set match, including a .750 (nine kills, zero errors) outing against Washington State on November 6, 2009. She won a bronze medal with Team USA at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and won a veritable slew of national titles with club teams all over the world before co-founding League One Volleyball (LOVB) Pro and winning the league championship with LOVB Austin in its inaugural season (2025). Lloyd was inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame in 2023.
 
BIG DIGS FOR JOHNSON
Cal libero Sophia Johnson was named the ACC Defensive Player of the Week on Sept. 29 for her outstanding play in the Bears' ACC-opening weekend at Virginia Tech and Virginia, averaging 5.29 digs per set to bring her string of double-digit digs performances to five and helping her team to its best conference start (2-0) since 2011. It was the first weekly recognition of Johnson's career as well as the first defensive award by any Bear since Kat Brown in 2012.
 
MIDDLES ON TOP
The Bears are fielding four formidable middle blockers in 2025. Senior Mikayla Hayden – one of Cal's top all-around players –is the Bears' leading scorer and is responsible for well over one-fifth of Cal's total points this season, including a tremendous 17-kill (.452), 10-block outing at Syracuse on Oct. 10. Junior Sawyer Thomsen is coming off a career year in which she started all 31 matches and had the most total blocks (111) by a Cal player since 2013, including an 11-block outing in the season finale against Notre Dame. Redshirt junior Sophie Scott lost the entire 2024 season to injury but has been impressive for the Bears when healthy, including a 100-block season in 2022 for a top-eight Pac-12 ranking. Finally, newcomer Ashleigh Woodruff (a junior transfer from Stony Brook) had a promising start to her sophomore year with the Seawolves before an injury forced her to sit out the season after just one game, in which she posted 10 kills and four blocks.
 
SISTER, SISTER
Senior setter Natalie Lau, who began the 2024 season on the bench but stepped into that year's starting role after five games due to her teammate's season-ending injury, is joined by her sister Elise Lau (a freshman defensive specialist) on the court as one of just two pairs of sisters on the same Power 4 team this season. The Brisbane natives, who played high school ball for St. Ignatius and club ball for Vision, grew up as Cal fans, attending as many volleyball, football and basketball games as they could and dreaming of one day representing the Blue & Gold. According to head coach Jen Malcom, the Laus are "two of the most competitive players on our team." This is the first year that they have played on any team together, having grown up too far apart in age to be part of the same high school or club squads.

NEW BEARS ON THE BLOCK
Cal brings seven new players to its roster this season in the form of five freshmen and two transfers, making up nearly half of the Bears' squad.  The first-year players are composed of defensive specialists Francesca Popescu (Johns Creek, Georgia) and Elise Lau (Brisbane), outside hitter Arissa Carbonara (Cuero, Texas), opposite Annemarie O'Gara (Phoenix, Arizona) and setter Maria Știrbu (Bucharest, Romania). Between them, they bring national team experience (Știrbu), two All-America honors (Popescu), a national title (O'Gara), three All-State honors (Carbonara, Popescu) and a tournament title (Lau). The transfers, sophomore outside hitter Dominique Phills (Iowa) and junior middle blocker Ashleigh Woodruff (Stony Brook), will each bring valuable experience to the young roster, bolstering positions that will have at least one player graduating at the end of this season.
 
 
STAY POSTED
For complete coverage of Cal volleyball, please follow the Bears on X (@CalVolleyball), Instagram (@calvolleyball), Facebook (Cal Volleyball) and TikTok (@calbearsvb).