Jerritt Elliott probably slept on it, woke up the next day, watched the tape and realized Texas didn’t play that bad in a five-set loss to Texas A&M, right?

“You think I slept?,” the Longhorns volleyball coach said Wednesday. “I might have taken a nap.

“As a coach, it sits with you, and you replay every play, and you watch the film, and sometimes get angrier during the film session, just because it's just, it's out of character of what we've been doing.”

OK, so maybe not.

Elliott could at least laugh about spending time with his wife as they celebrated his 600th career victory with dinner and some competitive tennis. Anything to work out the tension before getting back inside Gregory Gym and back to the SEC volleyball race.

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Texas (12-4, 7-1 SEC) slipped to ninth in the national rankings but still controls its fate in the league standings going into another big weekend. Texas hosts Missouri (15-5, 6-2) at 8 p.m. Friday and always-dangerous Oklahoma (9-8, 3-6) at 1 p.m. Sunday.

While the loss to the Aggies wasn’t a season-breaker by any stretch, it left a Texas-sized crater that got every Longhorn’s attention.

“I after the game, we talked about, yeah, obviously feeling this loss, it sucked,” UT libero Emma Halter said. “It’s not a team we want to lose to. We never want to lose, but especially to that team.

“We need to be able to stay in long rallies better and execute at a more efficient level,” she added. “But at the same time, our chemistry felt a lot better. It felt like we all were in it, and it just wasn’t going our way that night. So sometimes it just happens in sports.”

Texas volleyball coach Jerritt Elliott wants to play in Moody Center with eye on beating Texas A&M attendance record

Aggies set attendance mark last Friday with 9,236. A game in UT’s Moody Center could beat that next year.

Specifically, Elliott wanted to see more consistency on the first contact defensively and transition pass. The Horns also had too many hitting errors, he thought. UT’s 26 hitting errors against A&M was the highest total since… 26 errors against A&M in the first matchup on Sept. 27. Those two matches tied for the second-highest number of errors this season behind 31 in a loss to Miami on Sept. 7.

Elliott also didn’t like how the Horns sent too many overpasses back across the net after A&M’s bullet serves.

The Horns have also spent extensive time working on out-of-system plays. Assistant coaches spent inordinate amount of time cooking up crazy scenarios in practice. The liberos, defensive specialists and setters still have to get playable balls to their hitters. Players must be comfortable in chaos.

“We’re looking at making a couple adjustments,” Elliott said. “We’ve been doing some things in practice to try to get them in some different situations, pressure situations, and we’re always continuing to look to tinker based on what we’re learning from the information we have. So not major adjustments, but we're looking at some things.”

Elliott shouldn’t feel too bad about two off hitting nights against the Aggies. Opponents are hitting an SEC-worst .173 against A&M.

Elliott’s club is fifth in the SEC in hitting (.266) and third in blocks (2.59 per set). The Horns are playing well, no question. It’s just a matter of execution at the right times.

“We’re going to learn from it and grow from it,” Halter said. “And that’s about all you can do. You can’t just sit there and sulk.”