Ducks and Beavs open Pac-12 play with Civil War match

EUGENE – Looking ahead to its first week of conference action, the No. 8 Duck volleyball team (9-0) kicks off its 27th year of Pac-12 play with its first televised matches of the campaign on the new Pac-12 Network.

Oregon seeks is 11th win in 13 tries vs. Oregon State in Wednesday’s 7 p.m. Civil War match. Two days later in Los Angeles, UO looks for its third recent upset of the returning Pac-12 champion Trojans after its 3-0 and 3-1 victories over No. -6 and No. 4-ranked USC teams in 2008 and ’07 in Eugene.

UO’s No. 8 national ranking is its highest on the season, as is the Trojans’ No. 2 polling. The Beavers loomed just outside the top 25 after an upset two weekends of ago of then-No. 2 Penn State in Chicago.

This week, the Ducks and Trojans are among only 10 teams unbeaten among the 330 Division 1 programs. A third league member – No. 5 Washington (9-0) – is also undefeated in 2012.

Last week, Oregon notched sweeps vs. St. Mary’s and at Portland State to cap its fifth unbeaten non-conference slate under head coach Jim Moore (including 2006, ‘09, ‘10, ’11, ‘12). In that stretch, UO raised its non-conference, regular-season record to 82-4 in his eight years at the helm, and staked its fifth 9-0 start (2006, ‘07, ‘09, ‘10, ‘11) in that span.

UO’s first month of the season included two more wins over top-25 foes – then-No. 10 Kentucky (3-0) and at then-No. 24 Ohio State (3-2).