Jolene Shepardson turned over two thirds of her roster after the best season in two decades, then scheduled nine NCAA Tournament teams in the first eleven matches.
There’s a certain kind of schedule a program releases when it thinks it has arrived. South Florida’s 2026 slate is that schedule.
Nine of the Bulls’ first eleven matches come against teams that played in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Not nine over the course of the season. Nine before October. Kentucky, Stanford, Michigan, Penn State, TCU, Tennessee, Utah State, Marquette, Eastern Kentucky. That is a schedule built by a coaching staff that already knows how the selection math works and has decided to stop hedging.
It is also a schedule they will play with a roster that has been rebuilt around the edges and gutted in the middle.
Side Out: Where the Bulls Left Off
Last fall ended the drought. USF went 17 and 13, finished second in the American, and earned an NCAA Tournament bid, the program’s first appearance since 2002. Fittingly, head coach Jolene Shepardson was on the floor for that last one as a player.
The run ended in the first round in four sets to Penn State on December 5. Take a look at the 2026 calendar and you will find September 19: at Penn State, University Park. That is not an accident. Somebody circled it.
The postseason before that had a similar taste, a semifinal exit at the American Conference Tournament in four sets to Tulsa, in a building USF was hosting. Two straight years of getting close enough to see it.
Shepardson Sets Up Year Seven
Shepardson enters her seventh season at her alma mater, and the arc is unusually clean: a debut campaign cut short by COVID, an East Division title in 2023 plus the deepest postseason run in program history at the NIVC, the 2024 regular season conference championship and her first Coach of the Year award, then the 2025 NCAA return. USF handed her a contract extension in February. Nobody in the athletics building is hiding what they think they have.
The staff around her turned over too. Vicki Werskey came aboard in February and Sam Fallis in April, replacing Makayla Washington and Tyler Schnaible and joining holdover assistant Jason Haldane. Two new voices in a single cycle is a lot of change for a program with momentum, and how quickly that room gels is one of the quieter storylines heading into August. The Bulls also picked up the AVCA Team Academic Award in July, which is the sort of thing that does not win matches but does tell you the culture survived the turnover.
New Rotation: Two Thirds of the Roster Is New
Twelve of the 18 players on the 2026 roster were not in Tampa last season. Seven are true freshmen. Five came through the portal: Nina Jioshvili-Ravva from Hofstra, Ryelle Rondo from Alabama, Emelyn Stettin from Baylor, Rana Yamada from Syracuse, and Zeta Washington from Cincinnati.
Six return: outside hitters Samiyah Abdur-Rahim, Laila Ivey, and Addy Brus, middles Iyanna Garvin and Amelia Wass de Czege, and libero Miya Thomas. That is a real core, and it is more continuity than the raw turnover number suggests. Six of the 18 also arrived from outside the United States, two from Argentina plus France, Serbia, Brazil, and Japan.
The hole. Not one setter returns. Tatiana Johnson, Sarah White, and Raegan Richardson all ran the offense at some point last season and all three are gone. The job now belongs to Stettin, Jioshvili-Ravva, or freshman Riley McCaughey, none of whom has set a ball for this program. The first public look comes August 5, when the Bulls open camp with the Green vs. Gold scrimmage at The Corral, and the hands that come out of that gym decide how quickly the offense stops thinking and starts playing. There is no veteran fallback if the answer is slowly.
The production that left. Maria Clara Andrade won American Conference Player of the Year in consecutive seasons, earned AVCA All America honorable mention, and put up 21 kills in a conference tournament win over Charlotte last November. You do not replace that with one player. You replace it with a system, and probably with two or three people having the best years of their careers at the same time. Abdur-Rahim, who came to USF from TCU, and Ivey, formerly of Maryland, are the likeliest candidates.
The shape. Seven outside hitters, four liberos, four middles, three setters. The back row should come together fastest, with Thomas returning and Yamada and Rondo bringing college reps. The middle is where the returning experience is concentrated, in Garvin and Wass de Czege.
The concern. Nobody on the roster is listed taller than 6’2”. Five players sit at that number and none above it, and last year’s tallest player, 6’3” Ally Cavanaugh, is gone. Kentucky, Stanford, Penn State, and Michigan all roll out front rows that put length at the pins as a matter of routine. USF will have to block with timing, reads, and discipline, because it will not out reach anyone in September.
The Gauntlet, Point by Point
Bluegrass Battle (Aug. 28 to 30, Lexington). Eastern Kentucky on Friday, Kentucky on Saturday night, Utah State on Sunday. Kentucky played for the national championship last season. There is no soft landing here. A team breaking in a brand new setter opens the year in a hostile SEC building against a title game team on 24 hours of rest.
California swing (Sept. 3 and 5). At Stanford on Thursday, then Marquette on Saturday. Coast to coast travel in week two, two more NCAA teams, and a jet lag test that a lot of programs would have declined.
South Florida Invitational (Sept. 10 to 12, The Corral). The home debut, and it is a good one: TCU, Dayton, and Michigan on consecutive nights. Note the first one. Abdur-Rahim gets the Horned Frogs, her former program, in USF’s first home match of the year. The Corral holds a thousand people, and when it is full and loud it is one of the genuinely unpleasant places to visit in this league.
Penn State Classic (Sept. 18 and 19). Tennessee Friday, Penn State Saturday. Nonconference closes with the rematch.
Conference opens on the road (Sept. 25 and 27). At Tulsa, the defending American Conference Tournament champion and the team that ended USF’s 2025 postseason, then at Wichita State two days later. Opening league play with those two on the road is about as unfriendly a draw as the schedule maker could have produced.
October at home. The conference home opener on Oct. 2 brings Rice, the defending regular season champion, followed by Temple. After a Texas road pair at North Texas and UTSA, USF settles into a four match homestand: Charlotte, Tulane, Florida Atlantic on a Wednesday night, and Memphis. This is the stretch where a young team either figures out what it is or does not.
November closing stretch. At Rice, at East Carolina, at Florida Atlantic, home for UAB, at Tulane, then East Carolina at The Corral on Nov. 15 for senior day. Five of the final seven on the road is a brutal way to finish, and it is likely where the seeding gets decided.
American Conference Championship (Nov. 20 to 22, Houston). At Rice’s Tudor Fieldhouse. USF hosted last year and did not get out of the semifinals. This time they will have to win it somewhere else.
Match Point: The Bet
Set the two things side by side and the plan comes into focus. Shepardson replaced two thirds of her roster after the best season in two decades, including every setter who touched the floor, and then scheduled nine NCAA Tournament teams in the first eleven matches. That is not caution. That is a staff that would rather find out in August than in November.
The math still works in their favor. Play that nonconference slate and USF could sit at four wins and seven losses in late September and remain squarely in the conversation for an at large bid, which is close to the exact path that got them in last year. Losses to Kentucky and Stanford cost you very little. Losses to Charlotte and Memphis cost you everything.
So the season turns on a narrow question: how fast does a new setter learn six new hitters? The answer arrives quickly, and it arrives in Lexington.
First serve that counts: August 28. Everything before that is homework.
