With the Corral unavailable as the Sun Dome undergoes a $35 million renovation this fall, USF volleyball will play its home matches at the USF Rec Center.

USF had released its 2011 volleyball schedule a month ago -- the Bulls open the season Aug. 26 at New Mexico, with the home opener Sept. 2 against Eastern Kentucky -- but hadn't identified a home court for the team. USF coach Claire Lessinger had initially hoped the Corral (inside the outer perimeter of the Sun Dome) could be still used during the arena's renovations, but they'll move just a few hundred feet to the Rec Center instead.

And while USF hasn't released its men's or women's soccer schedules to the media or posted them on USF's official site, I can now share the schedules for both teams because they were on a pocket schedule I picked up ... at the athletic department today. ... Read more

Years before USF actually had an Athletics Hall of Fame, one of the highlights for anyone perusing the wall of USF All-Americans in the main athletic facility was stumbling upon the head shot of soccer standout Fergus Hopper, left. So while there is no shortage of familiar names in the third class for USF's Athletic Hall of Fame -- the first football inductee in defensive back Anthony Henry, basketball's Radenko Dobras, volleyball standout Michelle Collier, current softball assistant Monica Triner -- I'm intrigued to meet Hopper and learn his story.

USF's official site has a good writeup on the new class, announced during Saturday's BullsFest event, so I'll defer to a link to their story. We'll have a lot more on the inductees in advance of their enshrinement this fall.

Lots of links and notes to catch up on while I'm back in Tampa -- I'll drive back over to Vero Beach on Saturday morning to see USF's first football scrimmage of the fall. Skip Holtz has said he'll make his initial decisions as to depth charts, position changes and freshmen redshirting based on what he sees there, so it's a big opportunity for players to show what they've been working toward.

-- Got the Sports Illustrated college football preview in the mail Thursday, and SI is projecting USF to go 6-6 overall and 3-4 in the Big East for a sixth-place finish. SI has four USF opponents ranked in its preseason top 25 -- No. 7 Florida, No. 15 Miami, No. 16 Pittsburgh and No. 18 Cincinnati. ... Read more

It's a big weekend for USF volleyball, with its final home Big East matches against Louisville and Cincinnati, and that it a good time for a feature in Friday's Times on redshirt freshman middle blocker Caitlyn Breen, who has stepped in as a starter this fall and helped the Bulls to a 13-6 record.

Breen's father, Matt, is working in Afghanistan on a private military contract to help train the Afghani border patrol, but being 8,000 miles from home hasn't kept him from following his daughter's matches online. Thanks to online technology like Skype and Oovoo, the Breen family can keep in touch with Matt much better than when he first started working overseas a decade ago.

The credit for this story has to go to Maile Keeney in USF's sports information department, who wrote a great story that appeared in the Bulls football game program for the West Virginia game last week. Thanks again to Keeney and to the Breen family for their help with the story.