Gregory Has Fallen
Texas loses twice in a nightmarish Halloween weekend
My thumbs hovered over my phone’s screen as I contemplated what to type. Josh had informed the Point Texas group chat Sunday morning that he had an obligation that day and would appreciate some text updates on the Longhorn’s home match against Kentucky. I had given him a quick thumbs up that morning; I had expected a bounce-back performance from Texas and a spirited defense of their home court that I’d be excited to report on. My expectations were not met.
Halloween night was itself a tough blow to Texas fans. We had justifiable concerns about a late Friday match in College Station. A&M was on a five match winning streak coming into the weekend and had only dropped one match in SEC play against the aforementioned Kentucky Wildcats way back on October 8th. Between Kyndal Stowers and Ifenna Cos-Okpalla, the Aggy offense is well designed to exploit weaknesses in opponents’ blocking games, an area Texas has a big weakness in right now (you betcha there’s a red light section on that below).
I followed the match on my phone while attending a Halloween party dressed in a cow onesie (as much an homage to Bevo as an indication of my growing preference for comfort and convenience as I get older) while responding to the discussions in our game chat with some fellow Texas volleyheads. Even through my tiny phone screen I could see that the Aggy faithful brought their A-game, and in fact A&M set a program record with 9,801 in attendance. The Aggies pulled off a 7-2 run midway through the first set and it began to feel like it was going to be a long night.
A&M won the first set by six as the Longhorns defense seemed to have difficulty containing Stowers and Cos-Okpalla. Texas came out hot in the second set before allowing A&M back in it, but after a tie at 16 all, Texas went on a 6-2 run that saw them just three points away from knotting the match at a set each. Then the defense sputtered again and surrendered five straight points to give the Aggies the lead at 23-22. Texas would only manage to score once more as A&M rolled to a commanding two set to none lead.
Thankfully, Texas found its footing and managed to separate themselves from A&M early in the third. The Longhorns didn’t look back and took the third frame 25-17, seemingly back in form. The Aggies would fight back themselves in the fourth, and both squads traded points for much of the set until Texas was able to stack points on a series of late runs to take that set 25-19 and to even the match at two all. The optimism was growing in chat that after getting the wind knocked out of them early, the Longhorns had caught their breath and were now poised to complete a momentous reverse sweep. The optimism was short-lived.
Although Texas had done well to contain Logan Lednecky throughout the match, the duo of Cos-Okpalla (with a .609 hitting % and career-high 15 kills) and Stowers (with a season-high 22 kills) proved to be too much against the Longhorns’ missing block. Despite heroics on the back line by libero Emma Halter (16 digs) and a trio of crazy offensive performances from opposite Cari Spears (12 kills) and middle blockers Torrey Stafford and Abby Vander Wal (24 and 19 kills respectively), A&M was able to overcome Texas’ second half push in the match and take the fifth set 15-13, and with it hand the Longhorns their first loss of the season.
And so Sunday came, with a chance to bounce back against the last remaining undefeated-in-conference-play Kentucky. Texas winning against the Wildcats would create a three–way tie atop the SEC standings, as Kentucky holds the head-to-head over A&M, and the Aggies now hold the same over Texas. Importantly, we are at the point of the season where we are able to start shaking out post-season seeding to a degree, and the tournament becomes a regular point of discussion. The regular season SEC title will play major implications in that discussion.
Texas needed a win. We felt confident they had figured some stuff out late in the Aggy match as they fell just short of an impressive comeback. Surely the ladies would be pissed, and pride would not allow them to concede a match at Gregory. At least they’d come out swinging and give Kentucky hell, right?
Someone must’ve wished on a monkey paw for Longhorns football to take down a top-ten Vanderbilt team at DKR this weekend, because the volleyball team seemed to have all of the fight taken out of them when they stepped on the court on Sunday. Texas virtually rolled over on the first set, with Kentucky cruising to a commanding 25-14 win. The Longhorns’ blocking game improved slightly over their performance on Friday (a low bar to clear for sure), but Eva Hudson and Brooklyn DeLeye had no issues finding their offense early in that first set for Kentucky. That trend would continue throughout the match.
Texas fought hard in the second set and had multiple chances to tie up the match at a set piece, but ended up surrendering three separate set points. Kentucky was able to stitch together three straight points to place Texas in another two set hole with a 28-26 win in the second frame. Texas would again battle to within striking distance of taking a set in the third, but still found themselves unable to close, with the Wildcats winning the match with a 27-25 score in set three. Hudson managed 20 kills on a .452 hitting %, while DeLeye had 18 on .417.
And so I stared at my phone trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to word the news in my text to Josh that Texas had just been swept in Gregory. Late in the third I had written to him that (and this is a direct quote) “We are fighting for our lives to not get swept atm”. Then it happened.
Look, no one expected us to go undefeated for the entire regular season. In fact, looking back at our preseason prediction article titled Call Your Shot (August 29th, 2025), I had Texas going 19-4 with three losses somewhere between Stanford, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Kentucky, and Florida. Even with Texas having won against Stanford and Tennessee, it is still possible they could lose three against that set of teams. Josh had Texas’ final record at a slightly more optimistic 20-3, and he had been calling A&M as his SEC dark horse since he wrote a preview on that Halloween matchup way back on August 8th.
In a way, Josh and I have been playing a game of Russian roulette this season in terms of who would get stuck writing a recap article about the squad’s first loss given our rotating article assignments. We certainly didn’t expect that whoever got stuck with it would have to write about two losses in the same weekend. Trust me, this stinks.
But, Longhorn Nation shouldn’t start dooming just yet. Yes, we have some red and yellow lights that we will get into below that are definitely concerning, but this is still a team that has nine wins against top-25 squads, including several sweeps against that level of opponents. This team still has two of the top freshman hitters in the nation in Cari Spears and Abby Vander Wal. This team still has Ramsey Gary and Emma Halter in the back court. This is still the team with an AVCA Player of the Year contender in Torrey Stafford. And this is still the team with three-time National Championship-winning Jerritt Elliott as its head coach.
As we like to say on the Longhorn Nation subreddit and Discord: “Undefeated is on the table” (shoutout to our readers from that corner of the internet!). And while undefeated for the regular season is out of reach now, undefeated the rest of the way is still very much on the table. Let’s hope that this past weekend’s slump proves to be just that - a slump - and that the Longhorns regroup and come out more fiery than ever. Sometimes it takes losing a little to remember how to win a lot. Or something like that. I’m sure Jerritt has a better motivational quote. (Perhaps he can borrow Mike Tyson’s “everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”)
Red Lights
Blocks, Blocks, Blocks
Just a couple of weeks ago, I lamented the quick appearance and even quicker disappearance of our ability to block after Texas had put together 26 blocks against Arkansas. After that blip, Texas continued to be unable to put up much of a contest at the net.
Five against Ole Miss. Six against LSU. An uninspiring four against Texas A&M’s 14. A somewhat-improved eight against Kentucky. Kentucky had three players hit over .400 against Texas, and the Aggies matched that including that career-high performance from Cos-Okpalla at .609. Even when Texas has been able to limit a player like Logan Lednicky to a low .154 hitting %, she still manages to notch 12 kills against the Longhorns.
Even when the back-court duo of Halter and Gary are able to play a ball that gets past our blocking attempts, it’s often a tough play that leaves Texas out-of-system and allows for a free ball for their opponents. Oftentimes, Texas loses points off of touched balls that fly out-of-bounds.
Add in that (outside of a brief moment between Rella Binney and Ayden Ames on Sunday) the slide attack is still often non-existent for Texas, we are seeing some major elements missing from middle blocker play that are usually strong points in Texas’ identity. Texas’ offense at the pin-positions can match up against any of the top-teams in Division I play, but if the Longhorns don’t shore up defense at the net, they’ll find themselves trading blows - and possibly falling short again - against other top opponents in the tournament.
Anyone else missing Mari Singletary at the moment or is it just me?
Much Ado About Serving
Yes, Texas still continues to lose momentum at key moments with service errors, awarding opponents free points and more importantly sometimes forcing Texas out of favorable rotations. Texas awarded A&M eight points off service errors and Kentucky five. Yes, Texas continues to have issues with service receiving, including awarding opponents free points with reception errors.
The aces continue to lack as well as overall solid serves that put pressure on opponents and force them out-of-system. Meanwhile, Texas’ own passing continues to leave something to be desired. We’ve been beating this drum pretty much all season, and by ‘drum’ I mean ‘dead horse’, and boy, are my arms tired. Badum-tiss!
Anyway, I’m not going to rehash this complaint in-depth here once again, but I will point out a telling fact: on the season, Torrey Stafford is hitting .333, Ayden Ames is hitting .381, AVW is .252 and steadily improving as a freshman, Taylor Harvey is at .377 and Cari Spears is at .308, both of them also freshmen, and Nya Bunton is even at .342 herself. Yeah, the slide attack is absent, but our team is still able to hit well. The offense is not the problem. When Texas has been in close matches and/or lost a match this year, it has come off of errors in serving/receiving and due to no defense at the net. Without improving at least marginally either/both of those factors, the team’s path to the final four and another shot at a championship becomes difficult to picture.
Yellow Lights
Everything shifted to Red Lights, unfortunately.
Green Lights
This is Still a Damn Good Team
The issues notwithstanding, it’s important to remain optimistic and remind ourselves that this team is still outperforming expectations. It can be tough after a bad weekend, with two losses and getting swept at home, to not get hyperfocused on the issues that are facing this squad, but let’s take a minute to make sure we don’t.
Torrey Stafford managed to get 24(!) kills against A&M with AVW on her heels with 19 of her own. Stafford got another 15 in the shorter match against Kentucky, and Cari Spears was impressive with 13 of her own.
Texas still managed a streak of seven straight sweeps in the middle part of the season, their highest mark of such a streak since 2019. They showed a ton of resilience by pulling out victories in some nail-biter, five-set matches earlier in the season, including against Stanford. When they lost a five-setter, it was a match that looked out of reach early that they found a way to come roaring back in and just fell short in the end. This is championship-mentality kind of stuff.
They are still sitting at 18-2 overall, and if they can win out the regular season, it’s very probable that they end up with a top-four seed in the NCAA tournament, which is really where you want to end up at the conclusion of the regular season. The opportunity of playing a conference tournament this year could give Texas the chance to improve their seeding even more and maybe have another opportunity at either Kentucky or A&M.
Texas will be back and I expect after a week of coaching, they’ll be back stronger than ever. So have faith Longhorn fans, Texas isn’t done winning just yet.
Next Up
Texas has one match this week before getting a Sunday off. The Longhorns will swing down to Florida to take on the Gators.
Florida Gators (13-8, 8-4, L1) - 6 PM CT on Friday, 11/7 at Exactech Arena at Stephen C. O’Connell Center in Gainesville, FL (SECN)