Texas Volleyball: Longhorns on the cusp of a championship, will battle Louisville for national title

It’s really no surprise that the Texas volleyball team will play in the title match of NCAA Women’s Volleyball Tournament in Omaha on Saturday. This has become a semi-regular occurrence over the past 10 years, with the Longhorns earning a spot in the finals now four times since winning their most recent national championship in 2012.

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And it wouldn’t be a surprise at all if Texas beats Louisville for the whole enchilada. The Longhorns have been the top-ranked team in the nation all season and have plowed through their first five matches in the NCAA Tournament after losing just once in 28 contests this year and winning their sixth straight Big 12 title.

At this point, it would be a surprise if Texas doesn’t win Saturday, and the Longhorns are heavy favorites to do so. But they’ve been here before and left without the title, with each of those setbacks – most recently in 2020 – stoking the fire and setting the stage for this year’s run.

“I’ve been really impressed with their resilience and the way they want to fight,” Texas coach Jerritt Elliott said about his team. “They really want to earn this thing, and now they’ve got that chance. And we’re going to go for it.”

Texas (27-1) earned its spot in the final with a four-set win over San Diego on Thursday in which it dropped the first set with a bushelful of uncharacteristic errors after showing some frayed nerves. The Longhorns likely won’t get the chance to stumble out of the gate against Louisville (31-2), which outlasted Atlantic Coast Conference rival Pittsburgh in five sets to earn its place in the title match.

Texas is on the hunt for its fourth national championship and its third NCAA title while this is Louisville’s first trip to the final match.

On Friday, Logan Eggleston was named the AVCA National Player of the Year, becoming the first Texas player to receive the award, which was first presented in 1985.

Eggleston leads Texas with 4.22 kills per set, hitting .295 and with a team-high 42 service aces. In the postseason, Eggleston has averaged 3.83 kills per set with a .321 hitting percentage.

But the Longhorns are far from a one-woman show. Texas has been virtually bulletproof this season because of its depth and quality of star power across the board, as evidenced in Thursday’s win over San Diego in which it had three players with double-digit kills – Madisen Skinner (17 kills and .394 hitting percentage), Eggleston (16 kills after struggling in the first set) and Molly Phillips (14). Zoe Fleck had a game-high 21 digs and Saige Ka’aha’aina-Torres distributed 46 assists and had 11 digs in the win as Texas recorded 12 blocks and limited the Toreros to just .112 hitting for the match.

“We have so many weapons,” Skinner said. “And it takes a lot of pressure, I guess, off of us knowing that someone can step up in any given moment. Knowing that our teammates are going to step in and make a game-changing play if we need them to.”

Texas holds a 3-1 record all-time against Louisville, with the Cardinals winning the last meeting in the 2019 NCAA Regional Semifinal. Eggleston, Phillips and Asjia O’Neal, stalwarts of this year’s team, all played in the 2019 loss to the Cardinals.

Elliott refused to put the cart before the horse when thinking about the title match and what winning will mean to him and his program.

“It’s another game. It’s about handling our emotions and handling our process in terms of understanding that,” Elliott explained. “And if we make it bigger than what it is, that’s when things get in trouble. So I’ve got a lot of trust in this group in terms of our routines. Everything we do as a program is about routines. We will follow the same standard we did in the very first match of the season.

“They know what that is. They know what time that is.”

Eggleston said the getting the title has been the main goal all season.

“It’s the reason we came to Texas,” she said. “Jerritt has sacrificed so much for every single one of us. So it would mean so much just to bring it home to him. He’s worked so hard over the years and gotten there so many times. So kind of get him over the hump and win it for him and bring it back home to Austin would mean so much.”

The championship match will be aired by ESPN2 on Saturday at 7 p.m. Central.