The Arizona Wildcats won just eight matches last season. They were only victorious three times in their final season playing Pac-12 volleyball. One year later, they’re on the brink of a possible NCAA Tournament berth. Freshman setter Avery Scoggins deserves a lot of credit for that turnaround.
Anyone who follows college volleyball recruiting knew the Arizona Wildcats had one of the top recruits in the class of 2024 in Prep Volleyball’s No. 1 prospect Carlie Cisneros. Fewer people knew about Scoggins, despite her status as a second-team AVCA All-American in high school. Fans have certainly gotten to know her during her freshman season.
Scoggins has been named Big 12 Rookie of the Week a league-leading four times this season. She has played in 94 of Arizona’s 102 sets and 27 of its 28 matches.
Arizona’s freshman class was ranked seventh by Prep Volleyball. The group consists of Scoggins, Cisneros, Brenna Ginder, Adrianna Bridges, and An den Hamer. Scoggins, Cisneros, and Ginder hit the ground running, playing key roles in the Wildcats’ turnaround.
Arizona headed to Lubbock, Tex. for its final match with the possibility of winning 20 matches for the first time since 2018. It could also secure a league record of .500 or better for the first time since the same year. Perhaps not surprisingly, that year was the last time the program went to the tournament.
They could not have done it without Scoggins. The setter is the rough equivalent of a quarterback or point guard. She runs the offense. Volleyball is a much quicker game than football or basketball, though, so she has less time to make those crucial decisions than her counterparts in other sports. She knew it would take a lot of work if she was going to make a mark her first season.
“I needed to compete,” Scoggins. “I needed to be consistent, and I needed to be smart. And I think being smart was one of the most important ones because I think anybody can set a volleyball. It’s just who you set and when you set them that makes it the real game of setting. So just getting better at knowing what type of sets everybody wanted and what set’s their best set, and just adapting to the game and who’s blocking on the other side, like all the little things that go into it, I think that helped a lot.”
The nature of the position makes it tough for a freshman to step in and have success at the Power 4 level. Scoggins became the Wildcats’ starting setter in their first match. She has remained in that role for almost every point.
That wasn’t guaranteed when she arrived in Tucson. The Wildcats returned their starting setter from the year before, junior Ana Heath. Scoggins won out because head coach Charita Stubbs likes the way she thinks.
“Avery understands the setting a lot,” Stubbs said. “You don’t have to tell her what to do. You just have to tell her not to do something, because she tends to see things a little bit faster.”
Seeing things faster is a challenge for all setters. It’s especially challenging for a young setter in her first year of college volleyball. The game is so much faster at this level that the time needed to decide who to set isn’t always there.
“It’s supposed to be split second, and sometimes, to be honest, it doesn’t always happen,” Scoggins said. “It’s just kind of what’s in your gut. You really don’t have a lot of time, because it just all depends on the pass. You can never really plan it in advance. It’s just right then and there.”
Her gut has worked more often than not this season. Scoggins accounts for 10.38 assists per set, ranking third in the Big 12. Arizona hasn’t had a setter average more than 10 assists per set since 2018 when Julia Patterson had 10.74 as a junior.
She’s also making her teammates look good. The team is hitting .256 this year. Last season, the group’s hitting percentage was .204. It’s scoring 13.9 kills per set in 2024, a full two kills per set more than last season.
Individual hitters have seen their success rates improve playing with Scoggins. Fifth-year opposite Jaelyn Hodge averages 3.82 k/s, a career high and a dramatic improvement from the 2.73 k/s she had last year. Junior outside hitter Jordan Wilson scores 3.68 k/s, up from 2.89 last year. That puts both of them in the top six in the Big 12 for kills per set.
She is involving more players in the offense, as well. Last season, Arizona’s middle blockers accounted for just 18 percent of the team’s kills. That has increased to 24 percent this year.
Early in the season, Scoggins was occasionally subbed out in favor of Heath. That doesn’t happen anymore. Her improvement over the season has kept her on the floor.
“I think I’ve gotten better at being more consistent,” Scoggins said. “I think I’ve also gotten a lot smarter with when to set and who I’m setting when I’m setting them, because there’s been a lot of trial and a lot of error—like, a lot of error—and I just think I’m learning from those experiences. And that’s all that matters, is that I’m just not doing the same thing. I’m growing with my skill and the smartness of my game.”
That growth helped Arizona put together a six-match winning streak heading into the final regular season match at Texas Tech. It’s the longest conference winning streak for the program since 2001 when it went to the Final Four.
The final goal is the tournament. The Wildcats will be hoping to hear their names called for the first time in six years.