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2020 Texas Volleyball (Hopefully)


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2 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Back to beat the Lexi dead horse.  No, she didn't say a thing derogatory, or much at all, really, when she left.  At the time, I was pretty down on Elliott and whether he would ever make a serious effort to improve the defense/back row play.  Accordingly, I spent a good bit of time on volleytalk to try to get a bead on recruiting and past defensive recruiting, etc. and it was hard to avoid the Lexi talk.  In that hive of villainy, there was never once an allegation or even rumor that she badmouthed Texas, and there was all manner of speculation and bullshitting there.

I had seen the linked thing and thought it was a video and didn't "watch," but did read that, finally.

What really stands out about that is that she seems to have been forced by her parents at almost every turn of her volleyball career.  It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she chose Texas specifically because she envisioned another life for herself and to be distanced from her parents.  And that all gibes with her lack of killer instinct, too.  She strikes me as something of a victim of "tiger parents" or a Todd Marinovich lite. Orrr, she might have flaked out entirely.

She played well here, subject to the complaints about softness, but she was young and there was something of a leadership vacuum.  Kind of makes you wonder if she'd have stayed at Texas and been a bit more relaxed, if that might have turned her into a better player.

There really isn't much actual controversy beyond the simple fact that she transferred to archenemy corn.  No hard feelings.  I'll take Logan err'day.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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33 minutes ago, Cairn Horn88 said:

Wisconsin’s serves may not have been great, but they did get them over the net.  We need to not be giving points away on our serves.

It's a bummer, but it's been a thing for a couple of years now.  We actually had a goodly number of aces in this match to go along with all the errors.  I'd sure like to eliminate the errors at critical junctures.  A series of aces probably has value beyond the points scored.  Similarly, a service error on set point or to end a run prematurely tends to have effects beyond the loss of a point and side out.

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I'm going to guess that our fairly extended season is turning out to be an advantage against the B1G teams.  I think our talent and size is a bit better fine tuned than at least Corn and PSU have put together.  Their defense/back row play and fully tuned offense usually gives us more fits than either team has so far.

I didn't see the Wisky match, but it sounds like they aren't the usual well-oiled machine.

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Just now, TwiceHorn said:

I'm going to guess that our fairly extended season is turning out to be an advantage against the B1G teams.  I think our talent and size is a bit better fine tuned than at least Corn and PSU have put together.  Their defense/back row play and fully tuned offense usually gives us more fits than either team has so far.

I think Wisconsin’s issue is they haven’t played much recently because of Covid cancellations. 
 

They actually looked pretty bad against BYU too. Hoping we get the same Wisconsin team from these last two matches because Texas will wipe the floor with them if that’s who shows up. 
 

In a way, it might be best to play Wisconsin in the semis before they start figuring things out again. 

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10 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

What really stands out about that is that she seems to have been forced by her parents at almost every turn of her volleyball career.  It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she chose Texas specifically because she envisioned another life for herself and to be distanced from her parents.  And that all gibes with her lack of killer instinct, too.  She strikes me as something of a victim of "tiger parents" or a Todd Marinovich lite.

Wow. If there is any fragment of truth to this, then it’s a damn shame. 
I know it happens everywhere and all the time; but if parents who can’t simply sit back and “advise” their kids and let them make their own decisions (and ultimately mistakes); they’re simply setting them up for larger failures.

This is also a perfect example of the fact that we just don’t ever know what someone else may be going through. I hope Lexi finds success and more importantly, HAPPINESS, in Life. 

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50 minutes ago, NTVTXN said:

Wow. If there is any fragment of truth to this, then it’s a damn shame. 
I know it happens everywhere and all the time; but if parents who can’t simply sit back and “advise” their kids and let them make their own decisions (and ultimately mistakes); they’re simply setting them up for larger failures.

This is also a perfect example of the fact that we just don’t ever know what someone else may be going through. I hope Lexi finds success and more importantly, HAPPINESS, in Life. 

Well, it's just my opinion.  But among the rumors floating around was that her father, apparently a fairly well-known helicopter dad, didn't like the apparent amount of time she was spending doing fun stuff.  Her social media was full of "fun" or "party" pix, nothing outrageous.  And she was connected to Mo Bamba.

And, early on in that piece, there's this:

It was my parents' decision to give this sport a shot, simply because I was a tall girl and they wanted me to try something different. 

And a few other allusions to how maybe this whole deal wasn't exactly her choice and how she's had to reconcile it.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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48 minutes ago, kingkoopa6 said:

No sun?... lol 

Not that I care about the reason for it, but was there something more to this other than Lexi Sun transferring to Nebraska? Did she talk bad about the program too? Again, don't care, fuck John Cook and Nebraska, I was just curious if there was more to the story.

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4 minutes ago, ATLLonghorn said:

Not that I care about the reason for it, but was there something more to this other than Lexi Sun transferring to Nebraska? Did she talk bad about the program too? Again, don't care, fuck John Cook and Nebraska, I was just curious if there was more to the story.

No, she really didn't.  She handled it about as well as it could be at least as far as has been publicized and in this day and age, doesn't seem like much gets said or done without someone reporting it with video.

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13 minutes ago, ATLLonghorn said:

Not that I care about the reason for it, but was there something more to this other than Lexi Sun transferring to Nebraska? Did she talk bad about the program too? Again, don't care, fuck John Cook and Nebraska, I was just curious if there was more to the story.

A big part was going from Texas to Nebraska. Leaving to go to rival just added something extra special and gave the Texas haters another weapon to use against Elliot. 

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23 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

No, she really didn't.  She handled it about as well as it could be at least as far as has been publicized and in this day and age, doesn't seem like much gets said or done without someone reporting it with video.

It was much more than that. She may have deleted it but after Sun left she wrote a long blog where she bashed Texas. It angered a lot of Texas players. 

 

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1 minute ago, texasstrong12 said:

It was much more than that. She may have deleted it but after Sun left she wrote a long blog where she bashed Texas. It angered a lot of Texas players. 

 

I don't recall that at all, and I was pretty plugged into the rumor mill at the time.  And, as I said, deleted or not, tweets and whatever have a habit of getting saved and exposed to the world.

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14 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I don't recall that at all, and I was pretty plugged into the rumor mill at the time.  And, as I said, deleted or not, tweets and whatever have a habit of getting saved and exposed to the world.

I'll try to find it but several players (not currently on the roster) took shots at Sun on social media over it. 

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33 minutes ago, texasstrong12 said:

I'll try to find it but several players (not currently on the roster) took shots at Sun on social media over it. 

You sure you're not thinking of Ebony Nwanebu?  She temporarily left the team and had some personal blog posts about depression that I seem to recall drawing some ire from former players.

That was in the same general timeframe and there were some pretty serious questions about the mental makeup of the whole team.

The one bit of tangible controversy I recall was some kind of something where Sun was sucking up to John Cook, a birthday cake or some such, that was kind of over the top and some people were annoyed by it.

 

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1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

You sure you're not thinking of Ebony Nwanebu?  She temporarily left the team and had some personal blog posts about depression that I seem to recall drawing some ire from former players.

No but there were multiple players that wrote blogs with similar criticisms at the same time. Zelon also wrote something very similar during that same period. 

Just from searching, I can't find the blog post from Sun but I know she wrote something that was very critical of the Texas staff. She probably deleted it right after she wrote it because she knew what was coming with social media. I remember this vividly because it was at the same time as the Zelon blog post and my thought was "fuck recruiting is about to take a hit."

 

https://volleymob.com/former-texas-libero-olivia-zelons-parting-blog-upsets-teammates/

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4 minutes ago, texasstrong12 said:

No but there were multiple players that wrote blogs with similar criticisms at the same time. Zelon also wrote something very similar during that same period. 

Just from searching, I can't find the blog post from Sun but I know she wrote something that was very critical of the Texas staff. She probably deleted it right after she wrote it because she knew what was coming with social media. I remember this vividly because it was at the same time as the Zelon blog post and my thought was "fuck recruiting is about to take a hit."

 

https://volleymob.com/former-texas-libero-olivia-zelons-parting-blog-upsets-teammates/

Yeah, that rings a bell, too.  Sun really doesn't, though.

I can't prove it, but I have this sense that Micaya White, being the most talented player and ostensible team leader in that timeframe, somehow mindfucked the team pretty good.  She was an odd personality.

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11 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I can't prove it, but I have this sense that Micaya White, being the most talented player and ostensible team leader in that timeframe, somehow mindfucked the team pretty good.  She was an odd personality.

I'm not sure. Elliott is just a very in your face type coach. 

He can definitely be a hard coach to play under. I think with Zelon and Sun you had two California kids coming into Texas where it was no longer fun and games. 

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