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The Lady Blues will open MIAA play and host their first home match as Missouri Southern comes to Lee Arena for a 7 p.m. contest Wednesday. The game will be carried live on a video webcast through americaone.com for a fee and live stats will be provided through wusports.com free of charge.

The Lady Blues will be looking for their 11th straight home-opening win and 10th-straight MIAA-opening victory. Head coach Chris Herron not only has won every home-opening match since coming to WU in 2002, he's swept his opponent in every one of those matches.

Washburn (7-1) remained No. 4 in the AVCA national poll released Monday after a 3-1 weekend at the Colorado Premier Challenge. The Lady Blues won their pool Friday then beat then-No. 9 Metro State Saturday in the semifinal before falling to defending national champion Concordia St. Paul in the final.

Missouri Southern is 2-6 overall and will also be playing its first conference match. The Lions have gone 1-3 in each of their two weekend tournaments this year. Last weekend they beat East Central and fell to West Alabama, Midwestern State and Dallas Baptist in the DBU Invitational.

Lady Blues earn 27th straight top-10 vote
Washburn stayed put at No. 4 in the AVCA national poll released Monday.  The Lady Blues have now been in the top 10 in the AVCA national poll 29 straight weeks. They stayed that way all last year being ranked as high as second and as low as ninth throughout the year. They were also in the top 10 every week of the regular season in 2009 after a No. 11 spot in that preseason poll.

Washburn has been in the top 10 in 54 of the last 58 AVCA polls. They have been ranked in the poll every week since the start of the 2004 season and there have only been 10 weeks that they weren't ranked since Chris Herron began in 2002, including his first seven weeks.

Washburn joins two other MIAA schools in this week's poll. Central Missouri dropped from No. 8 to No. 9 and Emporia State dropped from 17th to 22nd. Truman dropped from the poll but received votes.

Concordia St. Paul remained No. 1 and Metro State jumped from ninth to seventh.

Herron begins 10th season of complete turnaround at Washburn
Head coach Chris Herron, in his 10th year at Washburn, is 14 victories short of 300 on the Lady Blues bench. Herron inherited a program that had just three winning seasons in its first 13 years as an NCAA II school and member of the MIAA. Right away, Herron turned Washburn into a contender by winning the league in 2002, his first year.

Washburn went .389 in its first 12 years of DII and since then, Herron has led the Lady Blues to an .844 winning percentage, winning at least 26 matches every year. That winning percentage is the highest amongst all MIAA schools since he started.

At 286-53 (.844) in his 10 years, he holds the school records for total victories and winning percentage. He's 361-82 (.815) in his career including three years at NAIA Benedictine (Kan.).
Herron started the year seventh with an .814 winning percentage among active NCAA II coaches with at least five years experience. He was 30th in career victories with 279. Herron's winning percentage was 17th amongst all coaches in all divisions with at least five years experience.

Herron's win total is highest in the MIAA. He is the second-highest tenured coach in the MIAA behind Pittsburg State coach Ibraheem Suberu who has coached the Gorillas for 13 years.

Washburn in home- and MIAA-openers

• Washburn coach Chris Herron has won his home- and MIAA- opener every year since starting in 2002. This will be the fourth time those two events happened during the same match.
• Not only has Herron won every home-opener at WU, his teams have swept the matches every time.
• Washburn has not lost an MIAA-opener since a 3-0 setback to Emporia State in 2001.
• The last loss in a home-opener was in 2000, 3-2 to Missouri Western. That match was also the MIAA opener that year.
• Washburn is 15-5 since 1991 in home openers. Home/away/neutral information is incomplete before 1991.

About This Week's Opponent
Missouri Southern will come to Lee Arena looking for its third win of the year. The Lions are 2-6 after dropping three matches last week in the Dallas Baptist Invitational.

2010 all-MIAA honorable mention selection Rachel Olinyk leads the team with 3.06 kills and 3.69 points a set while Rocky Crook leads with 3.22 digs. The Lions are hitting .168 as a team while allowing opponents a .230 attack percentage.

Missouri Southern went 18-14 last year and finished tied for sixth in the league with an 8-12 record.

Washburn has swept beat MSSU 19 straight times with the Lions' last win coming in 2001. Head coach Chis Herron is 19-0 against them.

Lady Blues finish second in Colorado Premier Challenge

• The Lady Blues won Pool IV by beating Colorado-Colorado Springs and West Florida on Friday. Saturday they faced No. 9 Metro State in the Gold Bracket semifinal and won a tough five-set match. They moved on to the final and were swept by No. 1 Concordia St. Paul.
• The match with Concordia featured 16 ties in the first set including every point between 6 and 18. The Lady Blues gave up big runs in the second and third sets and never rebounded.
• Mollie Lacy and Breanna Lewis were named to the all-tournament team. Lacy earned her second straight all-tournament team award this year.
• Lewis hit .427 in Washburn's four matches. She averaged 0.80 blocks and 2.73 kills a set to average 3.20 points a set. She hit over .425 in all but one match. Friday against Colorado-Colorado Springs she had 14 kills with zero errors and hit .483. She added seven blocks that match. Saturday against Metro State she had 11 kills and three blocks.
• Lacy reached 1,000 kills during the UCCS match, becoming the 14th Lady Blue to reach that total.
• Lacy moved alone into seventh in WU history with her 48th double-figure kill match after having three in the tournament.

Lacy joins 1,000 kill club after efforts Friday
With her 10th kill Friday against Colorado-Colorado Springs in the opener of the Premier Challenge, Mollie Lacy became Washburn's 14th member of the 1,000 kill club. She now has 1,028 to sit in 14th in school history. She needs 1,108 to catch Debbie McCormick (1992-95) in 13th.

With 253 total blocks, she needs 47 to join the 1,000 kills/300 blocks club. Only seven Lady Blues have earned that distinction. (Lacy's Career Statistics)

The last time a Lady Blue reached 1,000 kills was when Monica Miesner, Tessa Jones and Mandi Cox all reached 1,000 in 2007. Cox is the last to also total 300 blocks.

Lacy is also at the top of the WU career chart with a .374 attack percentage. Her first three single-season totals are in the top four in school history and she set a school record with a .405 percentage in 2009 to become the only Lady Blue to hit .400 or better. Mandi Cox is second on the career chart with a .326 attack percentage.

Lacy was an honorable mention All-American her sophomore year and she's earned all-MIAA all three years, including first team honors her sophomore and junior year.

Washburn picked second in MIAA preseason poll
The defending MIAA champion Lady Blues were picked second in the preseason MIAA coaches poll released in August by the conference office.

In 2010, the Lady Blues won a school and MIAA record-tying 18 conference games en route to the third league championship in program history. They finished the season 32-3 and qualified for the NCAA tournament for the seventh straight year and eighth time overall under head coach Chris Herron. The Lady Blues advanced to the South Central Region final for the second time in school history.
Washburn trailed Central Missouri in the preseason rankings for the top spot. The Jennies received nine first-place votes with 81 points. Washburn was second with one first-place vote and 73 points. The Lady Blues were followed by Truman with 65 points, Emporia State with 50 points and Pittsburg State with 47 points. Northwest Missouri was sixth with 39 points followed by Missouri Southern with 34 points, Missouri Western with 30 points. Southwest Baptist was ninth with 22 points and Fort Hays State was tenth with nine points.

Net Notes

• Washburn remains the top team in the MIAA by wins with a 7-1 record. Fort Hays State is 6-3. Central Missouri, Southwest Baptist, Emporia State and Truman are all 5-3. UCM and SBU opened MIAA play with wins over PSU and FHSU respectively.
• Breanna Lewis is on pace to reach 1,000 kills before her career is over. The senior has 797 total. With 79 this year, she needs 203 more to join Mollie Lacy on the list.
• Marissa Cox got her first start of the year against Concordia St. Paul and get five kills. The match before she hit .353 with eight kills, three digs and a block off the bench.
• Washburn moved to 46-40 all-time against ranked opponents under Herron, 16-19 against top-10 teams and 2-3 against No. 1 teams after the loss to Concordia and victory over Metro State.