Spring Exhibitions Pt 1
Texas volleyball returns with their first matches of the spring exhibition schedule
It’s been a long time since we got to discuss actual Texas volleyball in more than a hypothetical sense on Point Texas. With spring exhibition matches in Houston over the past two weekends, however, we’ve earned a temporary reprieve and are allowed to discuss new developments that actually occurred on the Taraflex.
The Longhorns opened the spring calendar as participants in the 2026 FAST Collegiate Invite and played two sets each against Baylor, Texas A&M - Corpus Christi, and TCU. Details are sparse and amount to little more than accounts on various social media platforms claiming to have been in attendance, but we know for sure that Texas ultimately went 5-1 in these sets with their only loss coming to the TCU Horned Frogs. With the amount of experimenting that happens in spring matches, it’s hard to draw many meaningful conclusions from wins and losses; the coaching staff tends to mix up the line-ups significantly. Who was or was not on the floor for the one loss can’t be firmly nailed down, nor can we settle how many line-up games TCU was playing for themselves.
The one takeaway that seems consistent is that the team has been working heavily in the 6-2 offense, a departure from what Jerritt and his staff have historically pursued; Texas has typically operated as a 5-1 offense since Coach Elliott got to Austin. There may be some trepidation among the fanbase at the idea as Texas last attempted this in the messy 2024 season where Averi Carlson and Ella Swindle both struggled to find their footing as the featured setters in a 6-2 offense.
We do know a good bit more about the Houston game as a result of it being broadcast on ESPN+ (something that University of Texas failed to adequately advertise on its social media channels, if you ask me). If you missed out on seeing that, you can watch a version on YouTube that someone recorded and then cut out commercials and other filler time from:
Typically, this is where we’d turn to Mr. McConaughey himself with the green, yellow, and red lights, but spring matches are where hope should spring eternal (and every worrying sign can be quickly hand-waved away as “it’s spring practice and they’re testing stuff out”), so we’ll just discuss some things that gave me warm fuzzies.
Green Lights
Henley Anderson
As we have discussed at length at Point Texas, Texas brings in a stellar recruiting class this season. Even amongst a wildly talented crowd, Henley Anderson stands out as the star of the show. The freshman outside hitter from Dripping Springs is in a battle to earn some playing time, and I think we saw on Saturday why the 6-2 offense is very much on the table for the 2026 Texas Longhorns this fall. Anderson was a weapon for Texas against the Houston Cougars, showing off impressive shot selection and velocity as well as proving to have strong chemistry with all three setters despite only stepping onto campus to join the team a few short weeks ago.
To add another layer to the promising toolbox she displayed, Anderson also delivered some exceptional serves when she got her opportunities to start rallies. There was a good bit of variety in her approaches in that department as well as a few highlight reel-worthy top spin rips from the prized pin. The room is crowded with Torrey Stafford, Cari Spears, and Abby Vander Wal as established starters in front of her, but Henley has already shown that she has a very real shot to see the floor a lot in the fall.
Service Pressure
Admittedly, it is a tough task to sort through the service situation in a spring match. Players are often testing new approaches or serving for the first time in a live game in front of fans and opponents in the spring. Coaches are encouraging their players to push themselves and be aggressive with their serves, so there’s a noticeably higher error rate in these exhibition matches than you’d see in a match that really counted for something. This was on full display for the Horns on Saturday as their service varied between missiles into the net, dazzling aces, and launches that left the building without hitting Taraflex.
With that in mind, there has been a clear emphasis from the coaching staff on increasing service pressure this offseason. Many players that we didn’t get to see serve a lot last season were given their shot to show their stuff including AVW and Taylor Harvey, and many of the incumbent starters also got to try out some things they’d been working on in the lab; Torrey Stafford was one of many players to debut top spin and/or hybrid serves while Ramsey Gary was serving much more aggressively.
Texas was victimized at times last season by teams with strong service pressure. It seems the coaching staff has put some strong attention into fighting fire with fire and searching for answers from the service line for Texas well. Yes, it was a mixed bag of results with a large number of errors and “effectively wild” serves, but the wide net of options should provide Texas with an opportunity to be greatly improved in their serving by the time the fall rolls around.
Callie Krueger
I was honestly blown away by how good Callie Krueger looked against Houston. That’s not shade I’m throwing at her unnecessarily, but rather a reflection of the fact that she didn’t get to play last season, so my familiarity with her game was severely lacking. If this is the first impression she’s giving Texas fans, then consider it an excellent one.
She had an impressive pancake in the third set and some seriously strong hustle to keep plays alive - exactly what you’re looking for out of your back row defenders. Between the blonde hair, the few sets she got wearing black, and the fact that her number ends in 2, it wasn’t hard to see the second coming of Emma Halter back there. Gun to my head, I’d pencil her in as the first DS in the game for Jerritt based on only that performance. Also good: Ca-llie Krue-ger works just as well for the chant when she gets up to serve as it did for Em-ma Hal-ter, so that one won’t need to make itself too scarce this season.
What’s Next
Texas volleyball has two more matches remaining in their spring exhibition schedule. This Saturday, April 11th, they’ll face off once again with the TCU Horned Frogs at the Recreational Sports Center on the Forty Acres at 1 PM. They’ll wrap up the spring with another match at the Recreational Sports Center next week Friday, April 17th, against the Rice Owls.
Beach Updates
Once you come home to the 512, everything gets better. At least, the Sandhorns (trademark on that one is still pending - I keep leaving voicemails that I hope will get returned someday) found that to be true the last two weekends.
In the Texas Invitational on March 27th and 28th, Texas faced one new foe in #10 Long Beach State and three familiar ones in #1 UCLA, #2 Stanford, and #3 USC. Texas finally broke through against the Bruins, upsetting the #1 team in the land by a match score of 3-2 while also handling business against USC and Long Beach State. Unfortunately, Texas was unable to exorcise their tree demons, falling yet again to the Cardinal.
Texas followed it up last weekend with four matches against much less scary competition, sweeping their way through Tulane twice, Houston Christian, and #19 Washington. In the process, the Horns have worked their way up to #3 in the nation with an overall record of 20-6, still behind the California duo of Stanford and UCLA.
The team has this weekend off but returns to action for the Lone Star Classic with their final two matches of the regular season against UTEP and Houston Christian at home in Austin before the MPSF Championships begin April 22nd in Huntington Beach, CA.
Analytics? In This Economy?
You read that right. While Point Texas isn’t and likely won’t be a stats deep-dive type of publication anytime soon, I have been spending some time working on a new metric to attempt to quantify the performances of different players around the country against their peers.
Introducing: Game Impact Score. Also known as GIS ‘round these parts, it is meant to measure the statistical impact a player has on the game in the form of kills, assists, digs, service pressure, and other actions that show up in the box score and translate it into one, easy to understand number.
“But wait, Josh,” you may be thinking, “What about teams that play tougher opponents?” Good news, gang! There is also GIS+, an iteration of GIS which considers opponent strength (in the form of the NCAA RPI) and adjusts the score appropriately. If an outside hitter drops 15 kills, a block, eight digs, and an ace on Florida A&M, their GIS+ value will be significantly lower than a hitter who does the exact same scoreline against Wisconsin.
“Volume stats are a terrible way to measure how good a player is though. Setters and outside hitters are going to rack up way more numbers.” Right you are, Ken. That’s why our metric will include one final piece of the puzzle: pGIS. Short for Positional Game Impact Score, pGIS will compare a player’s performance against the baseline performance expected of their position given factors like number of sets in the match and then assign a score on a very clear 0-10 scale with 10 being an all-but-perfect performance.
This will be a huge work in progress, so bear with me as we iterate our way through the problems with GIS and try to make it a very handy tool to at least be able to say “Torrey Stafford looked really good, and this metric agrees saying she played an 8.5/10 game for an outside hitter.” Or it becomes a machine for helping Brittany and I make graphics for social media to help advertise Point Texas in the future. Ideally both.
Looking forward to sharing more with you in the future! Hook ‘em!