Reanchor: How Texas is Responding to Their First Losses of the Season

It’s been smooth sailing for Texas volleyball most of the year, until last weekend. Within 48 hours, the Longhorns took their first two losses of the season, falling to an 18-2 record after matches against Texas A&M and Kentucky. These losses were against what are now the #6 and #2 ranked teams in the country, so there is certainly no reason to push the panic button. After racking up so many top-10 wins in non-conference play, it's not the end of the world that Texas takes a couple top-10 losses.

Jerritt Elliott has taken a lot of responsibility upon himself. “We had a lot of missed assignments this last weekend,” he said. “We can do a better job of clarifying that. And ultimately, that falls on me and the staff to be better at getting them prepared for that.”

Moving forward, the team is making a couple of adjustments, though these changes will primarily come behind the scenes by shifting some roles around on the coaching side of things. Associate HC David Hunt will now oversee serving and blocking after previously managing all things defense. Elliott himself is sliding from serving over to back-row defense, and assistant HC Reily Buechler-Canter will take on a larger role, adding back-row defense to her work with passing.

The shift represents a prioritization of defense going forward. If Coach Elliott is moving things around to get himself to focus on a particular phase of the game, you know that phase matters a lot. Coach Elliott says "We have to get back to our basics, we weren't very disciplined over the last couple of weeks." 

It was a rough couple of days around the program, and it forced the team to take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves a lot of questions about their identity and their systems. But this week, those losses have only acted as a wake-up call to turn that sorrow into action. In the practice gym, there is what I would describe as a renewed sense of urgency to get better every day. Jerritt Elliott was more hands-on this week than he's been in a long time. He’s been right there in the thick of things, coaching individual players directly.

When I asked Elliott how the team guards against losing confidence through the rest of the SEC schedule, he didn’t hesitate. “I don’t think confidence is an issue with this group,” he said. “The question is, can we be confident in what we’re doing systematically? I think that broke down a little bit in all phases.” This team still knows they are right in the mix for a national championship, but they plan to be more intentional in practice to make sure that version of Texas is what shows up on game days.

Next up is a trip to Gainesville to face Florida, where they’ll see a familiar face on the other side of the net in former Longhorn Jordyn Byrd, who leads her team this season with 320 kills. It's a huge opportunity to correct the course against a team that’s shown flashes of top-tier potential. Texas has struggled to come out of the gates quickly in the last four or five matches, so the goal against the Gators is to start faster, play sharper, and remind everyone why this Texas squad spent the last two months looking nearly unbeatable.