The Texas volleyball team still cards a perfect record in SEC play this season, improving to 7-0 after weekend wins over Arkansas and Georgia.

But the Longhorns still have more work ahead to impress the NCAA Division I volleyball tournament selection committee. Texas can start with a home win Wednesday against rival Texas A&M.

The committee unveiled its first midseason top-16 rankings, which are something akin to the College Football Playoff rankings. In the debut listing, the Longhorns were slotted eighth overall.

That’s good enough to host the first two rounds at Gregory Gym but, if seedings held, they would go on the road for a regional tournament. The back-to-back national champions would have to go to someone else’s house — maybe No. 1 Nebraska — to battle back to volleyball’s Final Four.

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Asked if he was surprised, UT coach Jerritt Elliott said, “No. I mean, based on the opportunities and the loss to Miami, losing to Minnesota in five, those were the two key big components, and there's enough teams right now putting up some big wins and being a part of that.

“But it’s still early. This is the time of the year where we're starting to creep into where a lot of upsets happened.”

Let’s say Texas (12-3 overall) did win the SEC. It’s unclear that the Horns would climb too much higher in the NCAA committee’s rankings. The Horns are already the highest-ranked SEC team on the list. The Big Ten and ACC are holding down a bunch of spots.

No matter how well the Horns do down the regular season home stretch, it’s possible they will have to leave Gregory Gym for the regionals no matter what.

“In terms of statistical data, in terms of our side out game, our hitting percentages, our defensive numbers, our transition game, our serving numbers, all those things are starting to kind of creep up to where we want them to be and in a good position,” Elliott said. “So we're excited about that, and I think we're in a good position to kind of keep moving forward.”

Jerritt Elliott gets 600th career victory

With a 3-0 sweep of Arkansas on Friday, Elliott notched his 600th career victory at Texas.

Elliott took over a program that already had a winning tradition, but he’s kept it going with three national titles on his watch. More could be on the way. Texas has the nation’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class for 2025 and another big haul for 2026.

“My wife was so excited about it, and we’re going to go celebrate probably this weekend, because we're giving the girls two days off,” Elliott said. “But this has never been about me. This has been about Texas and, more importantly, developing young women.

“I think the most special moment for me was the locker room, where they just doused me with water, you know, seeing their excitement for it,” he added. “Obviously, I'm the one that gets all the credit, but I'm very fast to realize that I'm not the one responsible for all these wins, and I give credit to all of my former coaches and the former players that have been here, and just super blessed to to be able to survive this long stay in Texas.”

MB Marianna Singletary sets new SEC benchmark

Texas is currently in the middle of a five-game homestand that continues Wednesday against A&M and finishes out with Missouri (Nov. 1) and Oklahoma (Nov. 3). The Horns do get a nice break embedded between those first two matches. Then, they’ll play four straight on the road.

In truly eye-popping fashion, middle blocker Marianna Singletary was named the SEC’s Defensive Player of the Week for the third consecutive week after 15 total blocks in two victories.

Singletary is the first player in SEC history to win Defensive POTW outright in three straight weeks. Other players won at least a share of the award and split it with others three straight times in 2017 and again in 2020.