Las Cucarachas
Undefeated Texas volleyball rolls through the Top 10
Jerritt Elliott scheduled a true challenge for his team this season. Through six games, Texas has played five ranked opponents. Four of those opponents are still ranked in the top ten. The Longhorns close their non-conference schedule with two more ranked teams in TCU and Baylor (thankfully both in the friendly confines of Gregory Gym). Despite the veritable gauntlet, it is hard to come up with words that are anything less than effusive about the team’s performance.
Three freshmen have earned starts this year after Taylor Harvey got the nod at middle blocker (MB) over Nya Bunton against Arizona State on Sunday. Outside hitter (OH) Torrey Stafford and defensive specialist (DS) Ramsey Gary are both transfers still in the early days of settling into the Texas volleyball program. All of those things should total up to a team that is promising but flawed, clearly capable of contending at a high level but not ready to expect excellence right off the rip. And yet, Texas is very clearly at worst the second-best team in the country right now.
Even that gap is closing, however. Nebraska has held every single first-place vote in the AVCA volleyball poll over the first two weeks of the season. With the week three poll, Texas has stolen three of the 61 votes away from the Cornhuskers. In a much more grassroots indicator of the threat that Texas is posing to an experienced and talented group in Lincoln, social media posts from the cornfolk are littered with comments adamant that Nebraska is obviously the better team right now. They can cling to those thoughts in the wake of their escaping the five-set
upset at the hands of the Creighton Bluejays (a team Texas dogwalked, to be clear) last night.
“Any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king.” ~ Tywin Lannister
Red Lights
Brittany broke the seal last week with our first red light: passing. I’m pleased to report that - much like we had hoped - I’m moving it back to a yellow light. The Stanford match saw some abysmal passing, even from players who should be more reliable, but the team responded well this past week.
Yellow Lights
Passing
Brittany gave the gory numbers about the Stanford match last week. It wasn’t pretty. When your best passer is still sub-2, you’re gonna have a bad time. It also indicated a worrying continuation of a theme last season that saw the passing struggles overwhelm the offense and ultimately lead Texas to an early exit from the national tournament in December. This week saw a marked improvement in passing across the board, but until the team proves that solid passing is a long-term relationship and not merely a rebound, passing will stay firmly in this section of our weekly articles.
The Louisville match was an interesting development for Texas. Emma Halter was targeted repeatedly by the Cardinals, shouldering 57 of Texas’ 93 attempts. She was just a hair below a 2 on the passing numbers but still improved from the Stanford match. Abby Vander Wal, Torrey Stafford, and Ramsey Gary each saw dramatic improvements on their passing in comparison to the Stanford match, and all were above a 2. Odd situation when your libero is turning in the weakest passing performance. In the Arizona State match, the numbers showed Texas mostly above 2.25 on passing with the exception of Torrey Stafford. She had a rough match in terms of passing but was still her usual lethal self on the attack.
The season may play out such that the Stanford match was an aberration for this team, be it an off game or possibly even that the Cardinal are one of the best serving teams in the nation. Regardless, taking steps forward as a team in two consecutive matches against top ten opposition is still a net positive. Let’s hope we watch that trend continue as we head into SEC play.
Middle Attacking
Nya Bunton really fell victim to the continuing theme of the disconnect between Ella Swindle and the MBs trying to attack the ball either on the slide (middle “slides” to the right side while the ball is in the air for an attack) or just on a quick (set right in the middle with a very low and “quick” set). Ayden Ames and Taylor Harvey have also had to adapt to issues here, but Nya unfortunately was left to hit negative against Louisville. As a result, Taylor Harvey got her first chance to start a match with the Gregory Gym opener against Arizona State, an opportunity she took advantage of immediately.
The middles continue to see sets that are not in the rhythm they’re expecting to the point that they almost appear to be needing to hover in the air a bit longer waiting for the ball to get to them before they can attempt to terminate it. The slide is also all but absent from the Texas offense at this time. This is a huge area for the Longhorns to improve throughout the season. Having an effective offense out of the middle without needing to get creative with how you place Cari Spears on the floor, for example, will add another layer and make what is already a dynamic attack into an even bigger nightmare for opposing blocks to manage.
Abby Vander Wal
AVW has been a phenomenal OH2 in replacing senior Jenna Wenaas from last year’s team. Her ability to make something out of nothing has been a huge breath of fresh air for many in the fanbase following repeated consternation about Jenna’s propensity to rely on tips more than many would like to see. Simply swinging with the confidence she does has been huge, and she’s recently taken some big steps in becoming a more effective passer as just a freshman.
Ordinarily, this criticism probably wouldn’t even be levied were it any other year with any other class at any other school in the country. I would also caution that this is only a yellow light with the assumption that growth will happen, not a red light like I’m dooming about her play. However, AVW coming to Austin alongside Cari Spears means both are going to spend a lot of their careers simultaneously being each other’s biggest fan and also primary measuring stick.
The only ask at this point, ironically enough, is for Abby to get deeper into her bag of tricks when taking swings. She has a hell of a swing as it is, but one of the things that made her such an exciting prospect as a recruit is her ability to manipulate her attack to do more than just crank power. To this point in the season, we’ve seen a lot of that power, and it appears that teams are starting to figure her out. Of the four pin hitters we’ve seen at least a decent amount of this season (AVW, Spears, Torrey Stafford, and Devin Kahahawai), only Abby is hitting below .200.
This may of course just be a symptom of a freshman who doesn’t get the same number of attempts as her counterpart in Spears and thus hasn’t quite gotten her rhythm down, and we may see AVW explode offensively as we get deeper into the season, especially with the SEC schedule being a theoretical step down in challenge compared to the non-con slate. This is far from an alarm going off, but it’s worth asking for more out of her when the other freshman is flying high and developing her arsenal at a wicked rate across the floor from her.
Green Lights
Queen Ramsey
Please do not read this as discounting Emma Halter’s contributions to the Texas defense because it absolutely is not meant to do that. Both of us here at Point Texas are big time geeked about the performances being put on by the “big littles” as Marcus Spears has started calling them. But some special flowers need to get handed out to Ramsey Gary after the Louisville match.
In both of Texas’ five-set thrillers this season, Ramsey Gary has proven herself to be the apex predator, turning the tide of the fifth set with some absurd defensive play to keep the Horns in it. In the Moody Center against Stanford, it was the “paint brush” dig. Against Louisville, she teamed up with Rella Binney to deliver an even more insane defensive play. After Emma Halter’s dig got out of control, Binney dove into the scorer’s table to keep the ball alive, only for Ramsey Gary to save the day on the third touch by diving into the Texas bench and successfully get the ball over the net. It was somehow only the #2 play the next morning on the SportsCenter Top 10.
This is the kind of attitude that Texas is playing with so far this year. There have been Longhorns teams in the past that played as if they were above fifth sets or doing the dirty work. This is a team that is stacked with as much talent as any other gym in the country, and it is playing with the mentality of a mid-major hoping to spring the upset on one of the big brands in the sport. They’re willing to be imperfect and messy as long as it means the ball hits the floor on the other side of the net. Ramsey Gary’s two iconic defensive plays (so far) this season embody effort-focused mindset perfectly, and it is infectious. It’s a rare breed of player who can play the DS role and have such a monumental impact on her teammates around her, even when they’re on the ropes.
Cari MF Spears
Yo, are we SURE that Cari is a freshman? Golly. What an absolute machine she has been to start the year. Your current Overall and Freshman Player of the Week in the SEC went on an absolute tear, dropping a career-best 16 kills against Louisville only for that mark to immediately be bested with 18 in three sets against Arizona State all while swinging over 0.300 for the week. She also has gotten more involved on the block, recording her first stuff and eight of her 13 assists for the season last week alone. Her game continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace.
Jerritt continues to find ways to get Cari involved in the offense, and not because she’s struggling with the workload she’s being given. Cari Spears is a weapon and a bonafide contender (if not outright favorite) for National Freshman of the Year already this season. In addition to the attacks from the right side and with the D-ball, Cari has found opportunities on the front row with occasionally getting middle sets. Being able to attack the middle of the floor with her ability to terminate presents a massive new headache for opponents to handle, especially given the issues the MBs have had at times trying to stay in rhythm with Ella’s sets.
If this trajectory continues (and let’s be very clear, she IS still a freshman, so steady, linear progression is not necessarily a guarantee), we might not be only talking about her as a threat for National Freshman of the Year. She is everything Jerritt expected her to be while recruiting her and more, displaying more tools than just the terminal power that was her calling card during the club and high school days.
You know the quote from the series finale of The Office when Ed Helms’ character, Andy Bernard, laments not realizing what you have until afterwards: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” Well, here they are. You’re in the good old days of Cari Spears. Savor them this season and the next three after that.
Las Cucarachas
Invoking the much-maligned cockroach in the “Green Lights” section surely can’t be the proper way to introduce this, right? I’ll grant you that the name could use some workshopping, but I think I can win you over with the thinking here: Everyone and their mother has heard the claim that cockroaches would be the only living creatures left on the face of the planet in the event of a global nuclear war. Now, I have no interest in ending up on a list given the modern American political climate by Googling the circumstances and fallout of nuclear warfare, so we’re just going to take that claim at face-value and do zero fact-checking.
Long story short, cockroaches are nigh impossible to kill. So far as I’m concerned, so is this Texas volleyball team. Brittany wrote last week about Texas getting pushed to the brink by Stanford in five sets, even going so far as to trail by five points in that fifth set. How else do you capitalize on a box office smash other than rehashing the same damn script for a sequel? Texas went the distance with a scrappy Louisville Cardinals team, even testing their luck slightly more than they did against Stanford by getting to an 11-6 deficit in the final frame rather than the paltry 10-5 against the Cardinal (no ‘s’).
After the 2024 season was littered with disappointing performances in five-set matches (1-5 on the year), Jerritt Elliott’s team has completely flipped the script by taking two Ws from what are currently the #3 and #4 teams in the country in back-to-back appearances. As Rorschach famously said in Watchmen, “None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!”
Next Up
The Longhorns continue the homestand at The Greg this week and close the book on the non-conference schedule!
#9 TCU Horned Frogs (7-1, W7) - 8 PM CT TONIGHT at Gregory Gymnasium in Austin, TX (ESPNU)
#21 Baylor Bears (5-2, L1) - 6 PM CT on Friday, 9/19 at Gregory Gymnasium in Austin, TX (SEC Network)