'Six Rotations': The Regular Season's Final Month Starts with a Big Week in the B1G

Every week until a champion is crowned, the YouTube show "Six Rotations" will be available here, with a brief rundown of the episode and the top upcoming matches around the country.

History out West Headlines the Final Week of October

It has been a down year for Kevin Hambly's Stanford Cardinal, but things got worse as treats turned to tricks out in Berkley on Wednesday night when Cal swept Stanford for the first time in program history.

This ignited a week filled with mostly chalky results, but a few head-turning finishes around the power conferences.

In the 2026 season, whenever a team has a massive season-altering week and climbs in the polls, you can almost guarantee they will have a letdown to follow.

This week it's Tennessee, who toppled Kentucky and Vanderbilt to become the darlings of our last episode.

However, this week, the Lady Vols lost a 33-31 second set en route to a four-set defeat at the hands of red-hot Texas A&M before being upset by Mizzou in five sets. Then, Texas A&M rode high into Austin just to see their rival Longhorns sweep them out of Gregory Gym.

In the Big Ten, Nebraska dropped sets in wins at Michigan and Michigan State. Indiana narrowly avoided an upset in East Lansing, surviving Michigan State in reverse-sweep fashion before Michigan stunned the conference with a four-set victory over the Hoosiers. Penn State took down Purdue in one of my favorite rivalries in the conference, as Minnesota kept their good juju alive with a reverse sweep win over UCLA.

TCU took down fellow ranked rival Baylor in five sets in the standard Big 12 chaos match of the week.

No losses among the top five teams, led by No. 1 @HuskerVB, means no changes to the top five in the new AVCA-Taraflex Division I Women’s Poll.https://t.co/jYos0Q8fLd #WeAreAVCA pic.twitter.com/FKq9CvJteg
— AVCA (@AVCAVolleyball) November 2, 2026

No. 7 Wisconsin and No. 8 @BYUwvolleyball continued their hot streak, as we look at the teams in the 6-15 spots in the new AVCA DI Poll. @PennStateVBALL also keeps winning, as the Nittany Lions pushed their consecutive victory streak to five.#WeAreAVCA pic.twitter.com/TweJ75MJpv
— AVCA (@AVCAVolleyball) November 2, 2026

Check out the No. 16 to 25 spots in the new AVCA-Taraflex Division I Women's Poll.
A quartet of teams in this part of the poll moved up two spots: No. 18 @UWVolleyball, No. 19 @GopherVBall, No. 20 @UNCVolleyball, and No. T-21 @VandyVolleyball.#WeAreAVCA pic.twitter.com/XV98zEg3tX
— AVCA (@AVCAVolleyball) November 2, 2026

The Week Ahead

As stated in the article's title, this is a banner week of sorts for the Big Ten. Nebraska makes its long-awaited West Coast swing with a late-night match on Saturday at Oregon (10 p.m. ET on BTN), then the Huskers get an afternoon match Sunday at Washington (6:30 p.m. ET on FS1).

Wisconsin hosts Michigan State on Thursday, and Penn State journeys into the northern tundra for the Minnesota/Wisconsin road trip on Friday and Sunday. Sunday at Wisconsin will be at 4 p.m. ET on FS1.

Among the other ranked matches, Baylor travels to Kansas on Thursday and North Carolina has the SMU/Pitt road trip on Friday (strange 1 p.m. start in Dallas) and Sunday (a more normal 1 p.m. first serve).

Vanderbilt also has a marquee week ahead, hosting Texas A&M on Friday and Texas on Sunday.

Next episode will be Monday, Nov. 9

You can find all archived "Six Rotations" episodes HERE

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