Colorado State volleyball clinched the hosting rights to the Pac-12 tournament after beating Washington State 3-0 Oct. 22 and Boise State 3-0 Oct. 24, both on the road. With these two wins, CSU had the best winning percentage through its first 11 games in conference play.

“It’s a really unique opportunity,” head coach Emily Kohan said. “I’ve never heard of any other conference running (the) first half of conference play to be able to do this, so it’s strange, but we were here for it.”

The Rams are set to host the top four teams in the conference at Moby Arena, which has a little over 8,000 seats. 

“It’s always funny when we see all of our biggest fans kind of get sad when they see us going to Vegas every year, and they wish that they could be there,” senior middle blocker Kekua Richards said.

When CSU was in the Mountain West Conference, the team went out to Las Vegas every year for the conference tournament. Now that they get to play at home, they get the opportunity to have their friends and families with them.

“And especially for, like, some of our teammates who have family,” Richards said. “Those that are either 30 minutes away or just a couple hours away, and they can go to Thanksgiving with their family.”

After winning against Fresno State 3-0 Oct. 29 and Oregon State 3-0 Oct. 31, CSU has officially clinched a spot in the tournament.

“It’s all the fans that cheer (that mean a lot),” junior outside hitter Maria Brun said. “All the students that always come. … It’s really hard (for other teams) to play here with all this noise behind you.”

As the Rams remain undefeated in Pac-12 play so far at 11-0, they are set to win the regular season conference title so long as they keep their stride. 

“Every single person feels it with just the energy that we have in Moby every single time,” Richards said. “We call it Moby madness for a reason, and all the fans that we have and all the people that we know in the stands personally, they feed us something that we can’t get when we’re away.”

CSU is 9-1 at home, with their only loss coming against current No. 7 SMU 3-1. 

“We love performing in front of crowds,” Kohan said. “But we love playing on the Moby court regardless of how many people are in those stands. And so we want to keep defending our home. We haven’t lost at home since SMU.”

The Rams are currently riding a 12-game winning streak with just five games left in the regular season.

“For the rest of the season, it’s just, like, going to play hard,” Brun said. “We’re practicing really hard, so let’s put all that into the game and try to do it as good as we can.”

Four of the Rams’ five remaining games will be at home, with their final trip on the road coming against San Diego State, which is currently ranked No. 2 in conference standings.

“The one road trip will be a big one because it will be probably for a conference championship,” Kohan said. “We’ve been great on the road so far, but that one’s going to have to be one that we’re really dialed in for what it’ll mean, probably.”

If both teams win out, their matchup against SDSU Nov. 14 is setting up to be for the regular season conference title.

“A big saying that we have in our gym is that the most important game is the next game,” Richards said. “So we’re just focusing every single day to try and get better as much as we can and look at the teams that we’re about to play and give them the same amount of respect that we would if it was a top-25 team; take care of business as much as we can in our own way and just perform the way that we do no matter what team we’re playing.”

The Rams are set to take on Gonzaga 6 p.m. on Nov. 5 at home, with this being the first of CSU’s three-game homestead. The team will hope to finish undefeated in conference play in what is proving to be a spectacular season. 

“We got five regular season matches left,” Kohan said. “We take them game by game still, so we are hyper-focused on Gonzaga, which is the Thursday game, and then after that we turn over.”