Texas volleyball won a second straight NCAA championship. Will the Longhorns win a third?
TAMPA, Fla. — In the moments after Texas’ stunning display of dominance against Nebraska in the NCAA women’s volleyball championship match Sunday, a young Cornhuskers squad was still trying to process its three-set sweep while looking ahead to next season.
“I think we're going to win three national championships the next three years,” said a defiant Harper Murray, perhaps the best of Nebraska’s five freshmen. Teammate Bekka Allick emphatically agreed in a response that didn't get picked up by the broadcast microphones at the post-match press conference.
When told of the Huskers’ comments at their own press conference, Texas stars Madisen Skinner and Asjia O’Neal both raised their eyebrows a bit while libero Emma Halter slightly shook her head. When freshman setter Ella Swindle was asked if she wanted to respond to Murray's prediction, Longhorns head coach Jerritt Elliott quickly leaned into his microphone with a resounding "No."
Swindle grinned, bit her tongue, looked at the reporter, then answered: "No.”
The responses and exchanges from both sides testified to the still-testy relationship between the two former Big 12 rivals. Both of the volleyball blue-blood schools have now won five national titles, and it doesn't look as if either program will slide from national prominence anytime soon.
Heck, the two teams might just meet for a fourth time in a national championship match one year from now. Nebraska will welcome back every player from its roster, pending any portal maneuvers, while Texas will lean on the returning core of Skinner, Swindle and Halter.
Could Texas become the first team to win three straight national titles since Penn State won four in a row from 2007 to 2010? Based on this season, you can’t ever count out Texas.
More: Ella Swindle, Bergen Reilly starring for Texas and Nebraska as freshmen, set for a title
From 'struggle bus' to national champs
A lot of national pundits counted out Texas after the first month of the season. The Longhorns opened the year 5-3, a rocky stretch that included a home sweep at the hands of Stanford. The offense couldn’t find a rhythm while trying to break in four new starters and adapt to a new setter in Swindle. But things started coming together as Big 12 play began, and the Longhorns rolled to a conference title while dropping just one set.
“We were really on the struggle bus earlier in the season,” Elliott said. “We just asked our kids to stay with the process, trust one another and work hard. When you have good quality kids that have good values, and they're very humble, we worked through a lot of ups and downs, a lot of tears, a lot of things that we were trying to figure out.
“And then, magically, it just came together because they put in that work. You can just feel it today. We were just so prepared. They just they were on a mission to be able to do this.”
With its NCAA path, Texas earned its title
Still, that slow start meant Texas wouldn’t enter the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed. The Longhorns embraced an unfamiliar role.
“I mean, we were the underdogs all season,” said Skinner, the All-American outside hitter who earned most outstanding player honors at the Final Four. “All the pressure was on everybody else that had returning people and had that connection and had a history playing together.
"Just coming in (to the season), obviously we wanted to be back-to-back, but that was kind of the last of our worries. We just wanted to play with one another and have some fun in the process and just try to play clean Texas volley. But yeah, there wasn't a lot of pressure on us. It was on everybody else, and that was great to feel for once.”
Elliott said it “was nice for us to go out and hunt people and put pressure on them” for a change.
“Wearing a Texas uniform, you're usually not the underdog,” he said. “But I think internally, we knew that we were a great team and could win this, and that was all that mattered.”
Texas seemed to shred any last remnants of pressure in a regional semifinal match with Tennessee, when the Longhorns fended off two match points and went on to win in five sets. Over their next three matches against three straight No. 1 seeds in Stanford, Wisconsin and Nebraska, the Longhorns won nine of their 11 sets while rolling to the fifth national championship in school history and third under Elliott.
Nebraska coach John Cook, who has led the Huskers to four national titles, said the Longhorns’ win over Tennessee seemed to flip a switch in Texas.
“Sometimes you go through those matches that give you whatever that extra thing is where you feel like a team of destiny,” Cook said. “You start to think, ‘Hey, it doesn't matter what happens. We're not losing.’ I think that was the difference-maker for Texas. They felt that.”
Skinner agreed, saying the Sweet 16 win over Tennessee “showed us how resilient you could be.”
“That just gave us a lot of confidence, just knowing that we could accomplish great things and it doesn’t matter if you're down 10 points or if we're up 10 points,” she said.
More: Who is Texas volleyball libero Emma Halter? Meet the Longhorns' defensive dynamo
Serving up a second straight national title
That confidence showed up the most at the service line, where Texas battered both Wisconsin and Nebraska. The Longhorns fired a season-high 11 aces in the semifinal win over Wisconsin and one-upped that with a dozen aces against Nebraska. At one point in Sunday’s win, O’Neal served 10 consecutive points and had four aces as part of an 11-0 Texas run.
And even when Nebraska did avoid an ace, it seemed that every Huskers pass was just a smidgeon off.
“They had a level of serving we haven't seen all year,” Cook said. “And that really impacted us in our momentum and our confidence, and then everything started going their way. They got all the momentum, and we could never get it back.
“I saw them do that to Wisconsin and do that to Stanford. So they're on a roll right now. Here’s a football analogy: It's like somebody is in fourth quarter with the lead and they're just running the ball. You know they're going to run, but you can't stop it. That's what it feels like.”
O’Neal said the level of serving from Texas was even more surprising, considering how many errant serves she had in warmups.
“I said, ‘Where's my serving today?’ ” she said. “I didn't know how it's going to feel, but I think just our energy and the trust in one another paid off. There was no doubt in anything that anyone is doing the entire night. So, really, that just goes back to our team culture, how to really uplift one another. That allows us to do kind of crazy things.”
Holes to fill in 2024, but Texas should be strong again
If Texas does any more crazy things next year, it will have to do it without O’Neal, who leaves the program after six seasons. The Longhorns also will lose fellow middle blocker Bella Bergmark as well as outside hitter Molly Phillips and defensive specialist Carissa Barnes. Transfers will probably affect the team, too, much to the displeasure of Cook, who groused about the players such as Skinner that Elliott brings into the Texas program via the portal.
“That's how they're going to build their team,” Cook said, glossing over that his leading attacker, Merritt Beason, arrived before this season from Florida. “That's how they built last year's team. I like what we're doing. I like recruiting kids and trying to make them be great.”
But greatness comes from players working together and trusting one another regardless of how they arrived on the same team, said Swindle, who could be an anchor of the Texas rotation for at least the next three seasons.
“The relationships that we have off and on the court, that's what got us here,” Swindle said. “Even though we had a rocky start, we were able to come through it. Being a freshman, it was hard, but I just have all the faith and belief in the world in these girls, and that's what got us a championship.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas volleyball won 2nd straight championship. Is a 3-peat possible?
