• Wisconsin and Texas volleyball teams will face each other in the NCAA regional finals after first meeting near the start of the season.
• Key factors for Wisconsin include overcoming Texas’ physicality and managing their talented pins.
• The Badgers’ ability to handle adversity in a hostile environment will be crucial for a potential return to the Final Four.

AUSTIN, Texas – Wisconsin volleyball’s first weekend of the 2025 season featured a high-profile match against Texas.

Wisconsin’s either final or penultimate weekend of the season – depending on whether UW can advance – also features a high-profile match against Texas.

But both sides will caution against reading too much into Wisconsin’s Aug. 31 loss to Texas ahead of a rematch in the NCAA tournament regional finals as each team seeks a return to the Final Four.

“We are completely different teams than what we saw however many months ago that was,” Wisconsin middle blocker Carter Booth said.

Texas coach Jerritt Elliott said almost the exact same thing in the Longhorns’ press conference, and his players echoed similar sentiments as well.

“I feel like both teams are just a lot more developed at this point in the year,” Texas setter Ella Swindle said. “At the beginning of the season, we were kind of just figuring out who we are and who we want to be. So now at this point, I feel like we know our identities, and we’re ready to go out and battle.”

Here are three keys for the much-improved Badgers to have a better outcome against the also-much-improved Longhorns in the NCAA tournament:

How efficient can Wisconsin’s attack be against Texas’ physicality at net?

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday signed a sweeping bill aimed at further shielding illegal immigrants in the state from deportation, creating new safeguards at courthouses, hospitals, day cares and university campuses to limit civil immigration enforcement.

Pritzker signed HB 1312 at Chicago’s Little Village alongside bill sponsors, officials, and community advocates.

“With my signature today, we are protecting people and institutions that belong here in Illinois. Dropping your kid off at day care, going to the doctor, or attending your classes should not be a life-altering task,” said Pritzker in a press release. “Illinois — in the face of cruelty and intimidation — has chosen solidarity and support. Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, and Gregory Bovino have tried to appeal to our lesser instincts. But the best of us are standing up to the worst of them.”

HB 1312 creates new protections across Illinois institutions most impacted by civil immigration enforcement.

BORDER PATROL CHIEF FIRES BACK AFTER PRITZKER CALLS FEDERAL OPERATIONS ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL INVASION’ 

The law allows people to sue officers if they believe their constitutional rights were violated. It prohibits civil arrests in and around courthouses for those attending certain state proceedings, and strengthens privacy rules at hospitals by requiring policies governing interactions with law enforcement.

It also restricts universities and day care centers from sharing a person’s immigration status unless required by law, and compels them to adopt protocols for handling federal agents by early 2026.

“If Pritzker the Slob focused on fixing crime in his own state instead of defending criminal illegal aliens, Illinois residents would be much safer,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Cracking down on crime and deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens should not be a partisan issue, but Democrats suffering from TDS are trying to make it one, all at the expense of the Americans they are elected to serve.”

LARGEST EVER ICE OPERATION RESULTS IN NEARLY 1,500 ILLEGALS ARRESTED IN BLUE STATES

President Donald Trump told CBS News in November that he believes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids “haven’t gone far enough” when asked about the federal agency’s tactics that have sparked protests and lawsuits.

The Trump administration has conducted immigration raids across major U.S. cities as part of the president’s campaign pledge of mass deportations, though the White House maintains agents are targeting only criminal migrants considered the “worst of the worst.”

Fox News previously reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, senior adviser Corey Lewandowski and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino have pushed for a broader and more aggressive immigration enforcement approach, targeting anyone in the U.S. illegally to boost deportation numbers.

Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, told Fox News Digital that Pritzker must be “unfamiliar with the US Constitution.”

“Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, still clearly states: ‘This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme Law of the Land.’”

“By signing this law, Pritzker violated the Supremacy Clause, his oath he took as Governor to ‘support the Constitution of the United States’ — which itself falls under the oaths clause of the Constitution,” said McLaughlin. “We hope the headlines, social media likes, and fundraising emails he did this for are worth it!”

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Trump told CBS News he believes his immigration mission will be complete once “many” of roughly 25 million people are deported.

“Well, it takes a long time, because, you know, probably I say 25 million people were let into our country. A lotta people say it was 10 million people. But whether it was ten or – I believe I’m much closer to the right number,” he said. “Of the 25, many of them should not be here. Many of them.”