Villanova Wildcats Volleyball

A balcony above a maple floor

Villanova's women's volleyball team plays its home matches in the Jake Nevin Field House, a building that opened in 1932 and was known simply as the Villanova Field House until 1985, when it was renamed for Jake Nevin, the university's long-serving athletic trainer. Men's basketball used it from 1932 until the move to Finneran Pavilion in 1986; the women's basketball team and, for one match against Penn, the men's team came back during the 2017-18 Finneran renovation. The rest of the time it is volleyball's building, shared with the intramural programme and the main athletic offices.

The shape of the place matters to how a match reads. There is permanent seating for 1,500 in sideline balconies above a maple playing surface, with room for temporary chairs on the floor when a fixture warrants it. Spectators therefore look down the length of a rally rather than across it, which is unusual for a mid-sized college volleyball venue and leaves very little distance between the balcony rail and the court.

The Steinbach era

Josh Steinbach took the Villanova job in 2007 and 2026 is his twentieth season. His record stands at 306-251, a.549 win rate and the most victories by any head coach in the programme's history. He was named BIG EAST Coach of the Year in his first season, in 2007, and AVCA East Coast Region Coach of the Year in 2015. The milestones came at a steady clip: his 200th win in 2018, his 250th in 2022 and his 300th on 17 October 2025, which made him the 74th active Division I coach to reach the mark and the second then coaching in the BIG EAST.

He arrived with an assistant's apprenticeship behind him rather than a head-coaching record: Wright State from 2005 to 2007 as recruiting coordinator, Cincinnati from 2003 to 2005, and earlier spells at Penn State and San Diego Mesa Community College, where he had also played before finishing his collegiate career at George Mason. He took an associate's degree at San Diego Mesa in 1999 and a BA in English from Penn State in 2002. He is from State College, Pennsylvania, and has two sons, Bennett and Carson.

The work that counts

The high-water mark of the Steinbach years is still 2015: a 20-win season finishing 25-9, a BIG EAST runner-up finish and the programme's second NCAA Tournament bid. Across the two decades he has taken Villanova to five conference quarter-finals and five semi-finals and recorded twelve winning seasons, and 2015 remains the most recent NCAA Tournament appearance on the programme's record.

The nearest thing to a second peak is the season just finished. Villanova went 20-8 in 2025 and 11-5 in the BIG EAST, good for the third seed and a third consecutive appearance at the conference championship. Two of the programme's tidier milestones landed on the same afternoon, 17 October 2025 at Alumni Hall in Providence: Abby Harrell, then a junior outside hitter, recorded her 1,000th career kill as the 21st player in programme history and the sixth in a decade to get there, finishing with 18 kills and 12 digs, while the 3-1 win (25-21, 16-25, 25-19, 25-17) gave Steinbach his 300th.

The season ended on 22 November 2025 at the Al McGuire Center in Milwaukee, where second-seeded Xavier swept Villanova out of the semi-finals 25-17, 25-19, 25-18. Taylor Lewis led the Wildcats with 11 kills on.375 hitting and made the all-tournament team; Alyssa Nelson put up 17 assists and seven digs. Xavier left at 26-3, Villanova at 20-8.

Where the 2026 season actually stands

The BIG EAST coaches made Creighton a unanimous favourite in the preseason poll published on 19 August 2026, with 100 points and all ten first-place votes. Villanova came second on 86, ahead of Marquette on 82 and Xavier on 75 — the programme's highest preseason placing. Harrell, by then a senior with three consecutive All-BIG EAST regular-season honours and fourth among returning players in both kills and points per set, was named preseason player of the year, the first Villanova player to take the award. Campbell McKinnon joined her on the preseason all-conference team as a unanimous pick.

Steinbach had built a deliberately awkward non-conference schedule and it bit. The season opened at Pepperdine's Asics Classic in Malibu from 28 to 30 August with a four-set loss to the hosts, 21-25, 25-18, 19-25, 20-25, followed by a four-set win over Sacramento State and a five-set win over South Dakota State. At Colgate in early September came a five-set win over Princeton, a straight-set loss to Arizona State and another five-setter won against the hosts. A trip to Washington produced a sweep of American and a straight-set defeat by Iowa State, then Penn State beat Villanova in four in mid-September. The Villanova Classic on 18 and 19 September delivered five sets against UMBC and a sweep of Princeton.

Conference play opened badly: swept at Butler on 25 September, then a five-set loss at Xavier the next night in which McKinnon posted a career-high 23 kills. The home opener on 2 October turned it round. Villanova beat Providence 25-18, 25-22, 25-23 with McKinnon on 13 kills, Nelson on 29 assists, Mina Diggs on ten digs and Annika Veurink on four blocks, then swept UConn 25-20, 25-19, 25-19 the following evening, McKinnon again on 13 and Cat Young adding seven. Harrell played the weekend while unwell. Steinbach put the difference down to serving: the team came out "with a little bit of purpose from the service line", he said, and got UConn "in a lot of trouble".

That leaves Villanova 9-6 overall and 2-2 in the BIG EAST through 3 October 2026. McKinnon leads the team with 186 kills at 3.21 per set; Nelson has 390 assists. The next two matches are on the road, at DePaul on 9 October and Marquette on 10 October, before Georgetown visit on 14 October.

The run-in

Six home dates remain after the Providence and UConn weekend: Georgetown on 14 October at 7pm, Creighton on 16 October at 6pm, St John's and Seton Hall on 23 and 24 October at 7pm, and Marquette and DePaul on 6 and 7 November at 5pm. The Creighton fixture is the measuring stick — the unanimous preseason favourite, in a 1,500-seat building, on a Friday night.

The BIG EAST Championship moves to Omaha this year, with semi-finals at D.J. Sokol Arena on 21 November and the final on 22 November. A fourth straight appearance there would be a programme first under Steinbach; a run to the title would end an NCAA Tournament absence stretching back to 2015.