AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Texas Longhorns moved to 36-0 all-time in the opening round of the NCAA volleyball tournament after taking out a feisty Texas A&M squad 3-1 Thursday at Gregory Gym.
Texas, the No. 2 seed in the region, rebounded after hitting .024 in a 25-21 first-set loss to pound the Aggies 25-13 in the second set. Texas won the next two sets 25-20 to clinch the match and berth in the second round against seventh-seeded SMU at 7 p.m. Friday.
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“I knew this would be a tough matchup because they’re a really good blocking team,” Longhorns head coach Jerritt Elliott said. “I thought we battled really hard and got our rhythm going in Game 2.”
After the tough first set, the Longhorns’ dynamic duo of Madisen Skinner and Asjia O’Neal carried them to victory. Skinner had a match-high 20 kills and O’Neal notched a double-double with 14 kills and 10 blocks. O’Neal hit a match-high .538 and didn’t commit an error in 26 attack attempts. Texas had 16 kills and three errors in the emphatic second-set win after having 10 attacking errors in the first set.
Despite coming off last year’s national championship run, O’Neal said there’s always nerves going into a win-or-go-home scenario like the NCAA tournament.
“We knew this would be a big rivalry game with a lot of emotions and a sold-out crowd,” O’Neal said. “There’s all those little things that create nerves, but I knew we were confident in ourselves and we played with aggression.”
The Aggies led 17-8 in the first set before the Longhorns worked it back to 23-20 but it was too much to overcome. Texas A&M clinched the set amid confusion on the Texas side as a Caroline Meuth attack fell to the floor before a Longhorn could keep it alive.
After that, however, it was all Longhorns.
Texas jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the second set behind three kills by O’Neal and then went on cruise control. An attack error by the Aggies gave the Longhorns set point at 24-13, and then Skinner punctured it with a crosscourt smash that glanced off an Aggie to end it.
“We didn’t get the middles involved a lot in the first set, and then we figured that out as a team,” Texas setter Ella Swindle said. “We got Asjia and Bella going, and then that opened up our offense.”
Swindle, a freshman playing in her first NCAA tournament, had a match-high 35 assists with 10 digs and five blocks. Elliott said she handled the job with poise under a lot of pressure, then looked across the table during the postgame press conference at Swindle and said, “I’m proud of you, kiddo.”
Texas A&M head coach Jamie Morrison got the Aggies to the tournament for the first time since 2019 despite an eighth-place finish in the Southeastern Conference at 8-10 and 16-12 overall. They notched big nonconference wins over five tournament teams and took out SEC powerhouse Florida in five sets during the regular season. Morrison said after the match, “We gave everything we had.”
“We don’t have a lot of players who have been in the arena before (the NCAA tournament), and to do what we did in the first set was pretty impressive,” Morrison said. “We’ll learn from this and I’m fired up that we had this experience to learn from.”
SMU defeated Texas State 3-0 in the other first-round match at Gregory Gym.
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