ASHLAND — As the No. 3 overall seed of the NAIA Volleyball Championships, Southern Oregon has never been better positioned on paper to make a tournament run. Reinhardt (Ga.), after going 18-2 through the Appalachian Athletic Conference, would understandably be inclined to disagree.

The first meeting between the Raiders (28-3) and Eagles (25-7) will be an Opening Round match at 3 p.m. Saturday inside Lithia Motors Pavilion.

Senior-laden SOU is home to start the tournament for the third year in a row, attempting to reserve a spot at the final site for the fifth time in six seasons.

The Eagles are back in the national playoffs for the first time since 2020, bringing with them an ahead-of-schedule roster comprising 70% underclassmen under a first-year head coach.

In addition to their two all-conference outside hitters, Marin Mackey and Mylena Testoni, the Raiders are getting more production from their right-side hitters than any team in the NAIA.

CCC Player of the Year Megan Perry led all players at the conference tournament with 39 kills over 10 sets, and 2023 All-American Hannah Stadstad was right behind her with 35. The pair combined to attack at a .296 average against elite defenses during the three-match stay.

Perry’s .390 overall attacking average is the second-best in the country among those registering at least 3.2 kills per set, and Stadstad is nine kills away from the 900th of her career.

The Raiders’ team attack of .276 is the fourth-highest in the NAIA. They’ll go up against a Reinhardt defense that is giving up an average clip of .100.

PLAYOFF PICTURE: When the 48-team field was announced on Monday, the Raiders were bumped up from their No. 7 final ranking to the No. 3 seed on the strength of an overpowering performance at the Cascade Conference Tournament. It was there, with sweeps of No. 8 Corban in the semifinals and No. 6 Eastern Oregon in the final, that they clinched an automatic NAIA Championships bid, though they were a lock to get in regardless due to their Top 25 standing. Reinhardt was also an automatic qualifier, earning its spot with a second-place finish in the AAC Tournament.

The CCC produced more qualifiers — six — than any other conference and claimed four of the 14 available at-large bids. (Of note: EOU is the No. 6 seed, Corban the No. 9 seed, and College of Idaho the No. 18 seed. Bushnell and Oregon Tech are unseeded.)

The entirety of the Opening Round is scheduled to play out Saturday with the top-24 seeds acting as hosts at campus sites across the country. The winners will move on to the Tyson Events Center in Sioux City, Iowa, and be divided into eight three-team pools, beginning round-robin play on Dec. 4-5.

The pool winners advance to the Dec. 7 quarterfinal round, the semifinals are set for Dec. 9, and the championship match takes place on Dec. 10.

BRIEFLY:

— The Raiders are No. 2 on the NAIA blocks leaderboard at 2.6 per set. In Sadie Byrd (1.2/set) and Linda Conceicao (1.3/set), they’re one of two teams in the country with a pair of top-20 individuals.

— As it stands, the Raiders’ winning percentage (.903) is the highest in team history. The top final percentage belongs to the 2018 SOU squad (.882) that went 30-4 and became the first in program history to reach the national quarterfinal round.

— SOU’s home record since moving into Lithia Motors Pavilion in 2018 is 72-19. The last time the Raiders lost a home match to a team that did not finish top-10 in the NAIA rankings was September 2022.

— The Opening Round format was adopted in 2008, and prior to 2020 teams that were ranked high enough got a bye to the final site. The Raiders played all five of their previous Opening Round matches at home and won the last four of those. Home teams went 82-14 in the O.R. over the last four seasons.

— In the SOU record-book department, Byrd is up to 513 career blocks, just 13 away from a 28-year-old school record, and Kayla Neidigh is up to No. 3 on the digs list with 1,387.

ABOUT REINHARDT:

— Tessa Corrales, the AAC Coach of the Year, has the Eagles in the tournament for the fifth time in her first season. They’re 2-2 in Opening Round matches — all since 2017 — and have one pool-play win to show for their final-site appearances.

— Their conference does not feature a Top 25 team, though AAC champion Columbia International (S.C.) — against which they went 1-2 — is No. 26 overall. The only current Top 25 team on Reinhardt’s schedule is No. 10 St. Thomas (Fla.), which defeated the Eagles in straight sets on the first day of the season.

— Expect a heavy dose of right-side hitter Jenna Smith from an attack directed by the AAC Setter of the year, Ashlynn Barnes. Smith, a 6-foot sophomore, averages 3.3 kills per set on a .200 average and is complemented by 5-10 sophomore outside hitter Juliette Baffico’s 3.2 kills on a .168 clip. As a team, the Eagles hit .192.

— The Eagles’ average-against of .100 is among the best in the NAIA, though they post only 65% as many blocks (1.7/set) as SOU. Their best defense is played on the floor by Silvia Aguado, the AAC’s Freshman and Defensive Player of the Year. Her average of 5.9 digs ranks 10th in the country.