On to Savannah
The eyes of Texas are now on an SEC Tournament Championship as the Longhorns close out the regular season
Texas had entered the SEC prior to the 2024 season with eyes on disrupting Kentucky’s dominance in the league. While that season didn’t pan out as well as expected, the Horns rolled through much of their 2025 schedule and seemed destined to face the Wildcats for the top mark in the conference this go-around.
Then we had Halloween weekend, and Texas A&M decided to announce that they weren’t to be overlooked. Texas lost that Friday night to the Aggies, and then slid further after getting swept in what had been projected as the battle for the SEC against Kentucky that Sunday.
The head-to-heads placed Texas in third in the regular season standings. Shit happens.
As Bill Belichick famously once said (his relationship choices aside): “On to Cincinnati.” For Texas, it was on to Savannah for a chance at revenge en route to taking the first SEC Tournament Championship in over two decades.
Of course, the Longhorns had two more matches on their regular season schedule. Starting with an unexpectedly close 5-setter at Auburn, Texas started off fast with fairly strong back-to-back set wins in the first two frames and appeared to have rebounded well from their early struggles against Florida the week prior. The good news is that in the next two sets (both of which Texas dropped), Coach Elliott did some experimentation, perhaps buoyed by the early two-set lead. Emma Halter moved back to center back for a bit - it was giving 2022! - and other tweaks were done to the rotation and where certain players were subbed in.
Once the match hit the fifth set, Texas decided to go back to business as usual for this season and cruised to an easy fifteen to nine final set win. Several players on the bench got some time in, with Jerritt perhaps looking ahead to determine where he could pull some depth from in a deep tourney run. Meanwhile, the five sets allowed Torrey Stafford to put on an absolute clinic with 32 kills. Were there still issues with serving? Yes. But with the regular season closing out, I’m retiring my portion of our red/yellow/green lights - things are what they are.
Sunday brought Texas’ final home match of the regular season (the Horns should be hosting the first few rounds of the NCAA Tournament!), and a bottom-quartile South Carolina squad came to town. Again, Texas ran up a quick two-set lead. The Longhorns slowed down and conceded the third to the Gamecocks, but then turned it around in the fourth and closed out the match fairly handedly. Stafford followed her performance earlier in the week with another solid outing, racking up 25 kills.
The South Carolina match was Senior Day for the Longhorns, and Emma Halter (four years sure do fly by), Whitney “Big Hit Whit” Lauenstein, Devin Kahahawai (I’m gonna miss using Donkey Kong gifs in match chats), and Kenna Miller were all honored. Elliott made sure to rotate everyone in, and Miller even sang the National Anthem before the match. All-in-all, it was a fitting conclusion to some great careers on the Forty Acres, even if there is still some work to be done.
As an aside: thinking back to Halter’s freshman season where she played the backline alongside Zoe Jarvis (nee Fleck) and having now gotten to watch Zoe play for LOVB Austin gets me excited to think of where Emma may end up after this year. I wish her the best of luck going forward with wherever she decides to go (she had an NIL deal last season as an ambassador for her hometown MLV team, Indy Ignite), but I think I speak for all of Austin when I say we’d love to see you in purple next year!
About Those Predictions
The Point Texas faithful - or even those that just like to dig deep into archives - may remember that Josh and I laid out a bunch of predictions for the regular season in the week leading up to the opening serve against Creighton. While we are still waiting on some regular season awards and such, we think now is the time to finally look back and see just how terrible of a job we did. I’ll state up front that there is a reason I don’t gamble1, and it’s not because I’d get wrapped up into illegal poker rings with NBA coaches; I just am not good at predicting things. But I digress…
Record: Happily, we were both wrong about this one. I had Texas going 19-4 on the season, and Josh was a little more optimistic with a 20-3 mark. Thankfully, Texas showed a lot of tenacity and grit this season, especially in close matches late. This saved them from a couple of more notches in the loss column, which allowed the Longhorns to end with a very solid 21-2 record.
Biggest Impact Freshman: Both Josh and I were bullish on Abby Vander Wal to start the season, and I think that was still a good call. AVW had some down matches periodically throughout the season where her hitting % sunk to some unimpressive lows, but overall when she was hitting well, she was really hitting well. Freshmen are expected to have down games anyway.
Ultimately, Josh did end up saying “If the question is who of the freshmen end up being the most influential, I think it ends up being Cari Spears.” It is hard to argue that this didn’t end up being the case. Cari started playing opposite for the first time in her career this year, and was instrumental in providing an option on the right side to keep opposing defenses from overcommitting to blocking Stafford. In the end, Spears notched five SEC Freshman of the Week and two SEC Overall Player of the Week honors while racking up 285 kills. And that was opposite of an AVCA National Player of the Year Semifinalist Torrey Stafford. Impressive.
SEC Regular Season Champ (if not Texas): Josh properly foresaw Texas A&M as being a legitimate threat this season, and called for them to take the conference. The Aggies ended up second, the deciding factor being an October 8th loss to eventual champion Kentucky. I thought Florida with former-Longhorn Jordyn Byrd in a more prominent role could have a shot. The Gators struggled in conference play, going 9-6 and ending at fifth in the standings (again, I don’t gamble for a reason).
SEC Honors
SEC honors for the regular season were just announced while this article was being written, so we get to report on how individual Longhorns stacked up against their counterparts this season:
First Team
Jr. Torrey Stafford (OH)
Fr. Cari Spears (Opp)
Second Team
Sr. Emma Halter (L)
All-Freshman Team
Fr. Abby Vander Wal (OH)
Fr. Cari Spears (Opp)
Fr. Taylor Harvey (MB)
Overall, these are some great accolades, and most impressive for Texas’ future may be having three freshmen on the All-Freshman Team.
About That Tourney in Savannah
In Avengers: Infinity War, Dr. Strange played by one Benechum Cumbersomemund (or however it is spelled) turns to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and famously says “We’re in the endgame now.” While this was a nod to hype the upcoming sequel that would come out a year later - and although no matter what happens in the SEC Tournament Texas is a lock for the NCAA version - I like to think that the Longhorns have entered their own endgame themselves.
There is really not any room for further experimentation, and season-long issues with serving and blocking are going to be what they are. The keys to victory (and a shot at hoisting another trophy next month) lie in this team acknowledging that every game is their last and in wanting it more than their opponents.
Yes, the SEC Tournament won’t matter much when it comes to December, and yes, it can be common in many sports for teams to undercommit to the conference tournament while looking ahead to the true postseason, but I think this is the time for this team to establish the win-or-go-home mentality.
Because Texas got the third seed, if they get past their quarterfinal matchup (and assuming the Aggies get past theirs), the Longhorns will have a shot at revenge against A&M in the semifinals. And while no one was able to break Kentucky’s now nine-year regular season champion streak, there’s good odds that the Wildcats will be in the final. So why not at least claim the first SEC Tournament Championship since 2005?
The top four seeds (#1 Kentucky, #2 Texas A&M, #3 Texas, and #4 Tennessee) all earned two byes to start the tournament. This means Texas will first take the court on Sunday, November 23rd against the winner of #6 Missouri vs. #14 Ole Miss / #11 LSU. The Longhorns were 9-1 in sets against these three teams this season (the lone dropped set was against Ole Miss), and should be able to cruise through this round before taking on either the Aggies or one of #15 Vanderbilt / #10 Mississippi State / #7 Georgia.
The tournament marks a great chance for Texas to continue to gain momentum following the “Halloweekend from Hell” and to potentially snag payback wins against the two teams that finished above them in the regular season. I don’t expect a quarterfinal loss to hurt Texas in the NCAA seeding (there would certainly be some trepidation at continuing the tournament in future years for top-tier teams in the SEC if that was the case), but I do believe a good run here gives Texas the opportunity to secure a regional #1 seed if they happen to be on a bubble right now.
And in the end, I think Emma Halter wants a few more pieces of hardware before she hangs up the burnt orange.
The SEC Tournament starts on Friday, November 21st with a first round matchup between two historic rivals for Texas as #16 Arkansas takes on #9 Oklahoma at 1:00p Central and continues through the championship match on Tuesday2. Texas’ first match is scheduled to be the final match on Sunday, November 23rd at 7 PM CT, though that may be subject to the three matches earlier in the day not running long. Matches will be broadcast on SECN or SECN+, check your local listings.
Josh does however take some gambles, as he did this past week when he put it on the line and proposed to his now fiancée! Big congrats to the future Mr. and Mrs. Pitel!
This may cause delays in our article next week if Texas goes on a deep run.