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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. Like Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, I don't know about this we shit white man. I can't speak for whoever was posting, but there was a time when it seemed like Elliott would garnish the roster with local players for DS positions instead of recruiting nationally, and it didn't go great. But that doesn't mean local players aren't any good. It just means there should be a high standard regardless of where they're from, and I'm not sure we've had that for our back row players on a consistent basis during Elliott's tenure. Amazing pins and middles. Not so great at the other positions. The rumor I heard - and I want to emphasize this is a rumor, not fact - is that Elliott's former wife was extremely active in the local club scene, and that impacted the roster choices somewhat. But that would have been a while ago, and wouldn't really be germane to what you seem to be talking about. I'm just being goofy anyway. Tuozzo isn't a realistic option.
  2. That's not really true, unless you mean the one time against Auburn where she had 5 serving errors. But the whole team was on a serving error funk, with 17 in total. I honestly think the staff was trying to emphasize getting the ball lower towards the net. This was the second match after the back to back losses to A&M and Kentucky where I think they went into a bit of desperation mode regarding trying to make the serves more effective. Along with the 5 serving errors, she also had one that hit the tape and then fell for an ace. She had the 4 serving errors versus Georgia, and the 3 serving errors versus Kentucky, but only 32 serving errors overall. I don't have a complaint about her service errors. I just find her serves woefully ineffective. The funny thing is, I think Binney's serves aren't that great and there are some numbers to back it up. Opponents are more adept at passing Binney's serves for optimal options for the setter more than any other server, but Texas scores more than 50% of the time when she's at the service line, which is by far best on the team. Elliott calls her the best server on the team. Which...I guess. The numbers matter. In any case, I don't really think we're getting Tuozzo. I just like fantasizing about it as a tweak to Kentucky. Plus she's really really good, and she's from Texas.
  3. Boy am I not sold on Gary as the libero. I want to be. I like her. But I am not. She makes the spectacular play but not the routine play. Grab Texan Molly Tuozzo from Kentucky. Really make it personal.
  4. No, it would be a volleyball specific rivalry. I can't imagine having strong feelings about their other programs. I mean I have strong feelings about their basketball program, but not vis a vis us. And since Calipari left that helped a lot. No one is thinking Kentucky is going to join the legions of Texas haters across all sports. I don't think of Nebraska as a rivalry in anything other than volleyball. Or Stanford. Nebraska fans hate all things Texas, but I don't give them a whole lot of thought outside of volleyball. Why would I?
  5. It feels like there's more mutual respect between the Texas and Texas A&M programs. Morrison was a volunteer coach at Texas for a couple of years back when that was a thing. He's openly stated Texas is their standard they'd like to get to. Craig Skinner was a coach under John Cook at Nebraska for 5 years. It's a pretty well known thing Cook and Elliott did not get along. There's been no outward signs of bad blood between Skinner and Elliott, but there are potential reasons for it. The loss to Kentucky in the finals. The Skinner transfer. The Rutherford transfer. Josephson coming over. Texas not recruiting any of the players from the state on the Kentucky roster. Texas being lauded as the new king of the conference upon entry when Kentucky has dominated it for a long time. Then there's the whole competitive psychology of fueling the flight/fight mechanism in our brain with perceive injustice and disrespect, whether real or not. We need to win more. We won last year but then lost the conference title to them. It's a bummer this match went the way it did, especially when it looked like we had it. But I see great potential in Kentucky being a huge rivalry down the road.
  6. Oh, I don't think this team has a chance against this Cornhusker team. They simply don't serve tough enough. Not saying Nebraska can't be beaten, but it won't be by Texas. I do think Texas can beat anyone else, including Kentucky. And I do think Nebraska is capable of losing. But it would need to be a team that can consistently get them out of system from the service line, and that's not Texas this year.
  7. This isn't new. Texas has played 92 sets this year. Bunton has played in 55. Harvey has played in 50. Ames has played in 82. There are a lot times either Bunton or Harvey haven't played. Lauenstein has literally only played in 11 sets all year. Lauenstein didn't play against Ole Miss, either. I'm not advocating it or defending it. I'm not criticizing it, either. I'm just saying it's pretty normal.
  8. Uh...no. I don't know what a good comparison for Lednicky versus Babcock is. Quinn Ewers to Vince Young? That's not even an exaggeration. I will say it seems obvious we sold out even attempting to block players in favor of quicker close outs and more hands at the point of the attack. We did it versus Ole Miss, too. There were a lot of open looks for different attack options on the A&M side. It wasn't just Lednicky. But we had an amazing night with the block, and we won, so in my mind it was well worth it. Watching our block this year as a Texas fan has been soul killing. Kentucky's big weakness is their anemic production from the right side, so the strategy will be viable again, IMO. Sell out to stop the pins.
  9. That Facebook fan group has a little Goering of positive vibes going on. He may be a good dude, but on there he's relentless about enforcing a positive only attitude. Kind of like surly.
  10. I am very emotionally satisfied with this personnel move. I don't have anything against Angela Kelly as a human being, but this was a long time coming. I want to say the Wicked Witch is dead, but that's not fair to Kelly. Her incompetence doesn't make her an evil villain. It's just that we can do so much better, and for so long we haven't.
  11. They also don't always charter. The LA airports have so many direct flights it's not as bad as Oregon has it, but having to go through commercial can be a nightmare. Especially for a soccer team.
  12. Mary Wise being on the SECN is a huge plus IMO.
  13. Florida falling off a cliff really hurts this conference's prestige at the top. Mississippi State getting swept by Vanderbilt in Vanderbilt's first season competing in volleyball is something. A couple of years ago Arkansas had an elite 8 team with Jill Gillen. Tennessee gave our national championship team all it could handle, including getting to match point. This year it's Texas, Kentucky, and A&M, then a big drop off to Tennessee. There are such a lack of real upsets at the top in volleyball. Then you have the 5 through 16 seeds play one another for a couple of days in a row before sending them in for the slaughter against the top competition. Which is the way to do it for RPI purposes. The top teams aren't brought down by playing the dregs. I hope we can get a good result out of this. It would be so wonderful to beat either A&M or Kentucky in rematches. Or both. I'll take both.
  14. There is zero percent chance that was scripted. Zero.
  15. He snorted his primary care physician?
  16. I don't want to fear Nebraska. I don't like our chances against them, but I also don't want to fear them. Whether we exit in the semifinals or the championship game, this season would be a huge success with this team, IMO. I'd say we should at least get to the regional finals. A loss in the Sweet Sixteen for this program just sucks. Not hosting regionals since 2022 sucks. Outside of Nebraska, I like our chances against anyone. I also think Texas is the most vulnerable of the top teams, so I feel like other teams should prefer being in UT's bracket versus Pitt or Kentucky. Outside of Nebraska/Pitt/Kentucky I think the team I'd least like in our bracket is Louisville. I know we already beat them head to head. They have small outside hitters. But I find that I really like that team a lot more than others. I don't know that they can beat Nebraska, but I'd love to see them in Nebraska's region.
  17. I guess. I feel like a home and home like what we had with the limited teams in the Big 12 provides the most fairness. I don't know. It's not like I'm advocating for the dang thing. I just don't think the reason to have one is money. That's the main point.
  18. It also doesn't hurt the best teams' RPI, since they're not facing any of the dregs of the conference. I don't really think it's a money thing. I do not feel like the SEC volleyball tournament is going to be bringing in the big bucks. I think it's more of an exposure thing, a way of creating a little more fairness in an unbalanced regular season schedule, and a way of boosting RPI. The lower teams get to add more wins. The higher teams are excluded from playing the worst RPI teams, so they too can get a boost to their RPI. The SEC didn't win enough games in non conference to be the RPI juggernaut the Big 12 is, but the thinking in how the tournament was set up was somewhat strategic IMO. I don't think there's a volleyball coach out there who does a better job of managing RPI, or who thinks about RPI more than Elliott. He was a big influence in the Big 12 for getting everyone on board in managing their RPIs, which helps the conference as a whole. I would bet dollars to doughnuts he's doing some of the same stuff in the SEC right now. I wish they'd have a preseason media availability, the way the B1G does. It would force Elliott into an environment he doesn't like, but that he's really good at. Maybe he could get some real volleyball people to shoot him some questions. Just for the record, I'm not a fan of the SEC tournament. I feel like we're already in as a regional host right now if the season ended today. Instead there's a chance we lose in the first round (I don't think the chance is all that good) and put that in jeopardy. They'd probably get the overall #2 seed if they beat both A&M and Kentucky, but I don't think potentially moving up a couple of seeds is worth risking the regional, no matter how slim the odds are of losing it. I also don't like the idea of playing 3 matches in 3 days the week before the tournament. But this team probably needs the court time. So even though I'm against the tournament, I'm probably wrong about that stance in terms of how it benefits Texas this year.
  19. Well, they have one of the best outside hitters in the country. It's easy to take that for granted after Eggleston and Skinner, but Stafford is right at their level. I don't think she's quite as terminal as those two at their peak, but she's pretty darn close. It's like wondering if Bijan Robinson is as good as Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams. Not completely analogous, but the point is the same. At some level it doesn't matter any more. She's also better defensively in the back row, and I think she could be a really good back row attacker if we'd just use her more. Spears has fallen off in production on the right side, but a big part of that is she's not serving any more. She barely plays in the back row. I felt like one of our X factors was having Spears coming out of the back row on that D ball attack. She'd take that flying leap with her big swing, and it was really tough to defend. But we've gone away from hit. We haven't been good at featuring attacks from the right side consistently forever, and I don't think we're particularly good now. We're pretty freaking elite in the back row defense with Halter and Gary when we're on, but we're not as consistent as some of the best back row defenses. But we're still really good. We have a tall setter and an established double sub, so we're not going to have a short setter taken advantage of in the front row like other teams. I don't know that I'd call that elite, but it's a strength. I think our biggest strength is that they just don't quit. It's easy to take for granted those two come backs from down 5 late in the 5th set against both Stanford and Louisville, but that was elite. We did something similar to Tennessee in the 2nd set. We came back against Kentucky when it looked like we were going to get blown out on our home floor 2 sets in a row with a 10-1 run. We even made a run with Gary at the service line in the set we lost to South Carolina. I feel confident that's not going to be enough to win a national championship. Certainly not against Nebraska. But we could still host a regional. Almost definitely will if we can beat A&M in the SEC tournament. For what it's worth I feel like we have a better team than A&M, and they're really good this year. I feel like we have basically a 50/50 shot against whoever we match up with in the regional finals, if we can make it that far. There's a remote chance it's SMU. Or A&M. Then we'll have a puncher's chance in the Final Four if we can get there. I just wish our serve was better. The middle blockers were more productive today, but I guess they were selling out to the pins and that's what allowed them to close the block better than they have all season long, because the South Carolina middles feasted in that 3rd set. That was disheartening. It was senior day, and even though we have a good shot at 4 more home games, I'm going to miss Halter terribly, and I'm very grateful for both Kenna Miller and Kahahawai for spending their careers here, when they could have been starters elsewhere. I'm hopeful Miller goes on to get a graduate degree somewhere where she can play. Miller sang the national anthem before this game, btw. Apparently was amazing. I know she's done that at least once before.
  20. There was that 2019 LSU team But yeah, I agree.
  21. I bring something.
  22. That's great stuff. He's on a podcast called 6 rotations. He has awesome input. I had no idea he was doing Texas State VB. I appreciate you sharing!
  23. There's a lot of noise about Izzy Starck coming to Texas, too, but nothing I'd say is reliable. Her Mom was an All American at Texas back in the early 90s under Mick Haley. Erica Hibben Starck. I feel like that's where a lot of the rumors are being generated from. I was not a fan of bringing in Carlson, and I'm not a fan of bringing in Stucky or Starck. I am, however, a huge fan of Stucky. Elliott's going to do what he's going to do, though. He brought in SKT after we made it to the championship match, and that did a number on Gabriel (mind you, I was personally elated we brought in SKT - watching Kentucky abuse Gabriel on the front row rotations still gives me PTSD). He brought in Carlson after winning the national championship. If he feels like someone is going to make the team better, I bet he pulls the trigger. And he ain't calling me to check what my opinion is before he does so. This team desperately needs better serving and better production from the middle blockers. I hope it can be addressed through the portal. I have concerns the middle blocking is partly from the loss of Sullivan, but that's me being panicky. I'm going to miss Halter terribly. I wish there was some way we could bottle her and never let her go. Like a caged bird or something. All for us, none for you.
  24. It's the right approach. If they were to ever actually get good in volleyball I'd change my tune. It's not like I'm a Sooner fan in volleyball. They're like Darrell Royal's cockroaches.
  25. I really thought the volleyball gods were going to tease me again. Stanford pulls it out in Palo Alto. Pitt and Kentucky are the two teams ahead of Texas heading into this week in terms of potential seeding (along with Nebraska). I don't really care where Texas gets seeded as long as it's the top 4.. It can make a difference being the #2 seed overall versus the #4 seed in terms of who you play in the regional final, but sometimes you get bad luck in that the lower seeded team ends up being better, a la Texas in 2023 when we faced Stanford who was the overall #2 seed. And then you're going to have to face that caliber of an opponent again in the next round. Pitt losing, even if it's to Stanford, who also has a very good resume but Texas beat head to head is terrific. The ACC is the best conference in the country, at least at the top. I think Pitt, Stanford, and Louisville all have Final Four potential regardless what bracket they're in. Including Nebraska's. And SMU isn't that far behind. They swept the Aggies earlier this year. I was a little surprised they lost to UNC in 5 sets, since I thought UNC was a bit of a mirage, but it turns out they're a pretty good team this year, too. Some other good teams sprinkled in there, too. Way better than the SEC, regardless of how the SEC/ACC challenge went.
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