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Allison Keeley enters her fifth season as the head coach of the Rebels and owns a record of 74-43 while at the helm of the UNLV program.
After four years on the job, Keeley has the UNLV volleyball program on the right track following four consecutive seasons of 15 or more victories, including back-to-back tallies of 20+ wins. She guided UNLV to three-straight semifinal appearances in the Mountain West Conference Tournament before achieving a feat that no other coach in the program's history had accomplished. In 2007, she surpassed the semifinal threshold and won the 2007 MWC Championship earning an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.
The Rebels had a magical run in 2007, which saw them notch a program-best 24 victories to only six defeats. The squad was recognized in the national rankings for the first time in program history with UNLV being listed in 13 consecutive polls. The Rebels achieved back-to-back weeks as the 25th-ranked team and 11 weeks in the "receiving votes" category.
Statistically speaking, the 2007 squad ranked highly in the NCAA's final categories. The team was 10th in digs-per-game, 12th in assists-per-game and 13th in kills-per-game.
With major success comes recognition and the awards flowed UNLV's way last season. Not only was she was named the 2007 MWC Co-Head Coach of the Year for her team's efforts and was later recognized as the AVCA's West Region Coach of the Year, but she coached UNLV's first All-America honoree (Lauren Miramontes) and four all-conference selections.
Overall, she has produced one AVCA All-America Honorable Mention selection (Miramontes), one AVCA West Region First Team member (Miramontes), nine all-conference honorees and one conference co-freshman of the year.
She has taken a UNLV program that had five consecutive losing seasons prior to her arrival into a Top 25 squad. In those five years pre-Keeley, UNLV held a combined record of 52-88, in the four years since the team has won 74 of its 117 matches.
In 2006, the Rebels won 20 matches for only the third time in school history. The 20 victories included a six-match winning streak that led the Rebels to a 8-2 mark to open up the season, while two four-match streaks followed during the year. One of the highlights of the season was guiding UNLV to its first victory in Las Vegas over Colorado State on Nov. 12. In MWC action, the squad finished fourth for the third straight year with a 10-6 record.
In 2005, Keeley's squad closed out the season with a 15-15 overall record, while finishing 10-6 in the MWC (fourth place), but came within one point of playing in the program's first-ever MWC Championship.
In 2004, Keeley revitalized a program that between 1978 and 2003 had only four winning seasons in 14 years of play (no team was fielded from 1981-83 and 1986-95). The squad finished the `04 season with a 15-12 record and the program's highest finish in MWC play (fourth) with an 8-6 mark.
Besides coaching success on the court, her players have also excelled in the classroom. Thus far, Keeley has produced 32 Academic All-Mountain West Conference selections, which included a league-high 10 in 2005.
Prior to coming to UNLV, she was the head coach at Villanova University from 2001-03. She helped rejuvenate the Wildcat program and left Philadelphia, Pa., with a 39-48 record. She helped move the Wildcats from the bottom of the Big East into a position of playing in the semifinals of the conference tournament. Her finest season in Philadelphia came in 2002 when the Wildcats went 18-16 and improved 11 matches over the previous year's record.
Before her three years at Villanova, she was the head coach at Southern Arkansas University, a NCAA Division-II school, for three years. In her first year at SAU, the team finished third in the Gulf South Conference. From 1996-98, she was the head coach at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and her teams qualified for postseason play twice in three years.
She began her coaching career at Sparks High School in Sparks, Nev.
Keeley graduated in 1990 from Carleton College with a B.A. in political science while also earning all-conference honors as a setter on the volleyball team. She earned her master's degree in education from Azusa Pacific in 1998.
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