Minnesota scene: Kansas joins Gophers in women's volleyball Final Four

This week's Final Four for the NCAA women's volleyball tournament will have a distinctive Midwestern feel.

Joining the Gophers and Nebraska of the Big Ten will be the Big 12's Kansas, which reached its first Final Four late Saturday night in San Diego by upsetting top-seeded Southern California 25-18, 25-21, 22-25, 19-25, 15-13.

It looked as if the top four seeds would all reach Omaha, but the Jayhawks (30-2) won the final six points of the fifth set against the Trojans.

So the semifinals on Thursday at CenturyLink Center will look like this:

The No. 2 Gophers will play No. 3 Texas at 6 p.m., and No. 4 Nebraska will play No. 9 Kansas at 8:30 p.m.

The winners will meet in Saturday's final.

All matches will be on ESPN2.

Boston won 5-1 on Saturday night in the first professional women's hockey game ever played in Minnesota, and the Whitecaps won 5-4 on Sunday with the help of Monique Lamoureux's three assists.

The Pride is part of the National Women's Hockey League, while the Whitecaps are an unaffiliated team whose roster includes Team USA players Lamoureux, Jocelyn Lamoureux-Davidson, Jessie Vetter and Alex Rigsby.