Texas A&M volleyball stuns No. 7 Texas in five-set thriller as Lone Star Showdown drama cranks up full throttle
Longhorns see their 79-match home winning streak vs. conference foes snapped
The Texas celebration started building in the fifth set when Madisen Skinner blasted a massive shot right through two Texas A&M defenders. The seventh-ranked Longhorns finally had match point over the rival Aggies.
Crank up the music, heighten the suspense, dial up even more crowd noise among the 4,576 fans packed inside Gregory Gym.
And cue the extreme heartbreak only this series can provide.
A&M middle blocker Ifenna Cos-Okpalla slammed home two kills and Texas made back-to-back hitting errors, handing the Aggies a 3-2 pulse-pounding victory Wednesday that snapped the Horns’ 79-match home winning streak over conference opponents.
“They were undefeated in the SEC until, you know, 15 minutes ago,” a jubilant Cos-Okpalla said afterward.
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Yes, they were. Past tense. Texas (12-4, 7-1 SEC) got a season-high 22 kills from Skinner and 13 more from Reagan Rutherford. But the Aggies (14-4, 5-3) had 23 kills from Logan Lednicky along with 10 kills and six blocks by Cos-Okpalla.
This thing was close from the moment the Aggies got off the bus until they had a post-game celebration with friends and family on the Horns' home floor. The final score for the Texas record books: 27-25, 14-25, 25-23, 21-25, 16-18.
“It sucks. Losing sucks period. We don’t typically lose in-state, so…,” a deflated Skinner said.
Told that this was A&M’s first volleyball win in Austin since 2001, Skinner shot back, “I wasn’t even alive yet.”
Just how bad was it? Texas coach Jerritt Elliott conceded this loss will likely knock the Horns out of contention for regional hosting duties in the NCAA tournament. “But look, everything’s still in front of us. We have an opportunity to keep getting better,” he said.
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Wednesday date vs. Aggies is the third in a five-match homestand for Longhorns
Simply put, the Longhorns didn’t play bad. The Aggies were simply sensational. The two teams split the regular-season series. And take this to the bank: the Lone Star Showdown between the two longtime rivals is only getting started.
Here’s another wild stat: Texas fell to 117-2 in conference home matches over the last 15 years.
“Texas is obviously an amazing team, and playing in Greg is, like, no other — besides Reed Arena, of course,” said A&M setter Maddie Waak, who dished out 37 assists. “We fought. We fought. We knew what we had coming in, we knew who we are, and we knew that we could do something awesome.”
The Aggies actually started slow and opened with six service errors. The Horns got massive blocks from Marianna Singletary and Skinner. Lednicky started with some big swings and had seven kills early. Elliott was begging the crowd for more noise, more energy before every point.
The second set, “We didn’t show up,” Elliott said as the Aggies ran away with an 11-point win. Texas was all over the place, hitting .038 during that set. But the third set, Skinner turned it on, hammering home seven kills as Rutherford added five more.
More inconsistency popped up in the fourth set. The Aggies went up 17-9 and not even a strong run by Skinner could prevent this from going five. “It takes a village, and everything just wasn't clicking in a lot of different aspects,” Skinner said.
The fifth set was back and forth, but in Elliott’s mind, it was there for the taking.
Emma Halter had an amazing chase-down, one-handed save and then she saved another ball right under the net on the next point. Rutherford had the perfect tip right into the donut on the A&M side. Skinner then smashed a shot that landed smack in the back corner. Texas led 13-10 in the fifth. Normally, it’s closing time.
But then it all melted away, courtesy of Cos-Okpalla and the Aggies.
“I thought we put ourselves in a position to win the match, and we just made too many errors at the end,” Elliott said. “I mean, we had a free ball that we netted. We made three hitting errors, and you can’t do that. You’ve got to be able to play cleaner for longer periods of time.”
