The Minnesota volleyball team will have a busy Labor Day Weekend, as it plays four matches in four days. The Golden Gophers will start by hosting the Diet Coke Classic on Sept. 2-3. Minnesota will play its first match against North Dakota State on Friday, Sept. 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Sports Pavilion. The Golden Gophers will then take on Central Florida on Saturday, Sept. 3 at 12:30 p.m. and finish the tournament against Xavier at 7:30 p.m. Minnesota will wrap up its Labor Day weekend against No. 1 Nebraska on Monday, Sept. 5 with a special start time of 1 p.m. The September 2nd start is the latest for a Golden Gophers team since they started on the same date in 1994. North Dakota State enters the tournament with a 0-3 record, while Xavier is 3-0 and Central Florida is 0-2. Nebraska enters the week with a 2-0 record after winning the NACWAA Classic this past weekend. The Cornhuskers play at the Ohio State Tournament before arriving in Minneapolis for the Labor Day showdown.

Minnesota will continue its trend of tough opening weekend matches when it plays No. 1 Nebraska in its fourth match of the 2005 season on Sept. 5. The last four seasons, the Golden Gophers have played either the No. 1 team in the nation or the No. 2 team in the nation in its opening week of play. The Golden Gophers hosted No. 1 Stanford in its second match of the 2002 season, traveled to play No. 2 Hawai'i in its first match of the season in 2003 and played No. 1 USC in the second match of the 2004 season.

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the PDF version of these notes. If you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader, download it for free!