Choosing Violence... Respectfully
#3 Texas finishes the SEC Tournament and looks ahead to the NCAA Tournament
Apologies for the delay with this article due to the holiday. I know that today isn’t necessarily the day that everyone has volleyball on the brain. Your belly is still full of turkey, your family is still mad at each other for whatever heated conversation you had over dinner (what is the plural of “platypus” anyway?), and you’re likely nursing an elevated heart rate in anticipation of the football game against A&M tonight. But let’s chit chat about the SEC tourney anyway.
As the Longhorns made their way to Savannah and Enmarket Arena for the SEC tournament, very few would have described them as “rolling” into the weekend. Following their nightmare Halloweekend in College Station and getting swept out of their own gym against Kentucky, the Horns closed out the regular season scuffling their way through less-than-convincing wins over Florida, Auburn, and South Carolina, none of which ended in fewer than four sets. The block had been victimized by the Aggies and Wildcats, and efforts to shake up the coaching staff and react to the issues that sank those matches were still a work in progress. As a team, Texas had gone several weeks without seemingly putting together the complete, dominant performance we had seen out of them since the non-conference and early part of the SEC schedule.
Persistent problems since the first 10 or so matches of the season left many Longhorn fans doubting exactly how high the ceiling might be for the 2025 edition of Texas volleyball. In addition to the aforementioned block issues, Brittany and I have written at length about the myriad of little issues that have arisen over the course of a long schedule including but not limited to struggles from the service line, youth at key positions, passing, and slow starts in multiple matches. With a week off between the South Carolina match to end the regular season and their first sets of the SEC tournament, the task at hand for Jerritt and his staff was to get enough of those issues corrected to rebuild the team’s confidence in itself and prove they were capable of being on of the elite favorites on the journey to Kansas City.
As a result of the losses to Texas A&M and Kentucky, the Longhorns ultimately ended the regular season in third place in the SEC standings. With the structure of the SEC tournament, this was enough for Texas to secure first- and second-round byes and advance directly to the quarterfinals on Sunday, requiring the Longhorns to win only three matches in three days to snag the tournament title as a consolation prize for falling short in the regular season. This unfortunately also meant that Texas would be playing a team that already had the opportunity to knock off the rust by playing in matches for one or two days prior (though with their own risk of fatigue).
Ole Miss
Following upset wins Friday and Saturday over LSU and Missouri, respectively, Ole Miss would serve as Texas’ opening opponent on Sunday in the SEC tournament, less than a month after the Longhorns had traveled to Oxford, MS to face the Rebels in their regular season tilt. That instance of Ole Miss vs Texas was anything but clean for Texas, going well beyond 25 points in the first set to take the win and dropping the third set entirely. Texas recorded a mere five blocks in four sets against Ole Miss in addition to committing 14 service errors in the match. Ole Miss’ star outside hitter (OH) Gabi Placide also had a big day in Oxford, registering 22 kills while hitting .278 for the Rebels. It was a perfect example match to showcase the issues Texas faced on their side of the net in 2025: unreliable blocking, messy serving, and allowing “lesser” teams to hang around longer than they should due to slow starts and unforced errors. Texas was able to overcome those problems in Oxford behind productive days from freshman pins Abby Vander Wal and Cari Spears who put up 21 and 16 kills, respectively, while both hitting over .350.
Thankfully, Sunday’s match was a different story entirely. Texas thoroughly dominated Ole Miss from the get-go, sweeping the quarterfinal match handily by a score of 25-11, 25-17, and 25-8. The Texas block arrived in a way that it really hadn’t all season beyond the out-of-conference matches with Creighton, Wisconsin, and Louisville, as well as against Arkansas in-conference. Texas racked up nine total blocks in three sets (3 blocks per set - quick mafs) including a suffocating third set where Ayden Ames in particular made hay against the Rebel attack. Texas also cut down on the service errors with a mere four - a mark they hadn’t hit since the non-con match against Arizona State. While AVW wasn’t able to repeat the dominance she had in Oxford, Torrey Stafford and Cari Spears both had double digit kills while hitting at least .500 to propel the Longhorns offense to the victory. It was a welcome return to see Texas dominate a team that they are expected to dominate, thus setting up a rematch with #2 seed Texas A&M on Monday.
Texas A&M
I won’t (more accurately, refuse to) re-litigate what went wrong against the Aggies on Halloween night in College Station. Texas choked away a late lead in the second set, forcing them to try to reverse sweep A&M for the win. They ultimately fell short despite forcing a decisive fifth set, all while A&M became one of the only teams in 2025 to hit over .300 against the Horns in no small part due to ineffective blocking and service pressure.
This proved to be the most thrilling match of the weekend for Longhorns fans as Texas would exact their revenge on the in-state rivals. The blocking improvements witnessed Sunday night against Ole Miss appeared again against A&M as Texas recorded 15 blocks in the four set match. This massive jump in blocking performance allowed Texas to hold A&M to an offensive hitting efficiency of .222, paving the way for the Longhorns to control the match outside of a messy second set and hand the Aggies a convincing loss. The improved blocking once again allowed Texas to take fewer risks at the service line, resulting in only six service errors. This type of complementary volleyball has been sorely lacking for Texas - multiple holes in their game has prevented them from simply being able to “scheme around” the issues in order to build an effective gameplan against the elite teams in-conference. Each of the pins were able to contribute double digit kills, which in turn allowed space for the middle blockers to get an offensive showcase of their own: both Ayden Ames and Nya Bunton recorded seven kills each and hit .407 as a tandem. It was by far the most heartening performance Texas has had since the start of SEC play this season both because of who it came against (A&M is an elite team with legitimate national title chances) and the fact that it happened in a win-or-go-home setting.
Kentucky
Coming into the tournament, many predicted that Texas would need to at least make the championship match of the SEC tournament in order to solidify their claim to being one of the top four teams in NCAA volleyball and subsequently secure a top-line seed for the national tournament. With the win in the semifinal against A&M, Texas did exactly that while also setting up a potential revenge-minded date with the Kentucky Wildcats. After being swept off the floor of Gregory Gym by the ‘Cats to open the month of November, Texas wanted to prove that the gap between them and Kentucky wasn’t nearly as big as that match would imply. Much like the first A&M match, Texas was victimized by their inability to slow down Kentucky’s star hitters in Eva Hudson and Brooklyn DeLeye as the Wildcats hit .353 in the sweep.
It’s fair to say that Texas represented themselves much better in Savannah in their showdown with the Wildcats for the SEC tournament trophy on the line. The Horns held the ‘Cats to a much more reasonable .277 hitting efficiency, a stark decrease from their effectiveness in Austin. Brooklyn DeLeye in particular was in hell for the night; the Texas defense held her down to the tune of only hitting .047 for herself. Texas thoroughly controlled the first set, winning by a six point margin in a frame marked by solid defense and blocking for the burnt orange and white. The second set was much more evenly-matched with Kentucky primed to control the set similar to how Texas controlled the first. A late comeback allowed Texas to overcome a six-point deficit and steal the second set and all momentum heading into a potentially-decisive third. While much closer throughout than the first, Texas clearly stayed in control deep into the third set.
And then they closed it out effectively to sweep Kentucky and hoist the trophy.
Next Up
Selection Sunday is on deck for all NCAA volleyball teams this weekend. Texas figures to be the #3 overall seed and #1 seed in the Austin region of the bracket. Tune into the selection show on Sunday, 11/30, at 5 PM CT on ESPN.
Postscript
Okay. Fine. I lied. Texas did not close out the third set effectively to sweep Kentucky and win the SEC. Quite the opposite actually.
Despite holding a strong 23-19 lead late in Set 3, Texas unraveled. A Rella Binney service error was the first of several mistakes by a variety of Longhorns players that led to Texas blowing the third set against Kentucky. Things got worse from there, as Kentucky would control the fourth set (and hold off another furious Texas comeback in the waning moments) and ultimately the fifth set as well. Texas went from having multiple match points in the third set all the way to getting reverse-swept to lose the match. Shit.
After back-to-back games of more than 3 blocks per set, Texas’ block regressed to fewer than 2 blocks per set and 8.5 total. Service errors went back through the roof with ten. As a result, Eva Hudson and the Kentucky opposite and middles were able to tee off, hitting extremely well in later sets. Texas also frustratingly struggled to score out of their own timeouts; it’s really hard to slow a team’s momentum with a timeout when it almost always results in them still scoring despite you designing a play of your own to break the scoring streak you’re trying to interrupt.
The Kentucky game was both the best of times and the worst of times for Texas. Coming into the match, I said in a conversation that Texas’ improvements in the prior two matches were timely in a way that made it tough for teams to adapt quickly to them - the changes made to simplify the blocking schemes they are running confounded their first two opponents, after all - but it was likely that super elite teams would be good enough to solve them in matches. That is unfortunately exactly what played out against Kentucky, one of the few super elite teams in the country that has proven it can best the Horns.
However, I will argue strongly that Texas fans should be more confident now in the team’s ability to challenge for a national title than they were going into the SEC tournament. Massive improvements were made on the block, the passing steadied, setting was generally more consistent (some fans will have selective memories about this because everything is Ella’s fault to them), and serving generally gave away fewer free points (though there is still space to be more aggressive). This team did enough to show not only the country but also themselves that they are capable of playing with and beating anyone in the tournament field even despite faltering against Kentucky Tuesday night.
As Torrey Stafford said in anticipation of the A&M rematch on Monday night: “We choose violence… Respectfully.”
I was actually really impressed with the entire match against Kentucky. There's no shame in losing to that team, despite of the reverse sweep and missing multiple match points. They played well enough to win against a Kentucky team that nobody would be surprised to see make the national title game, and only mildly surprised to see win the title. Kentucky's backline defense is a thing of beauty and Eva Hudson is a monster. Their setter made 1st team all-conference, and they have a 2nd team all-conference libero. Just a crazy-stacked roster.
For a while, I've been feeling like this Texas team has been a year ahead of schedule, when you consider the freshmen and a re-tooled offense. We won't magically get better at the block just by letting a year pass, but I have to think that we'll see AVW, Cari Spears, and the whole blocking unit as a whole perform better with another year under their belt.
For the tournament, we're talented enough to beat anyone but have enough inconsistency that anything in the 2nd round or beyond could test us. Making the Final Four would be a massive accomplishment, but is very very possible.