Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted
1 minute ago, Js1 said:

23-23

Texas is definitely losing the serve game today 

Service errors are the false starts of volleyball. It's one thing for the hard servers to do it, but netting lollipops is how good teams get upset. 

Posted
1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

First full match I’ve watched this season but they appeared to make that 4 set victory as difficult as possible on themselves, and are fortunate that Alabama is what they are. 

Even our C+ effort is enough to beat the worst teams in the SEC

Can’t have those lapses against Auburn, Kentucky, Florida, aggy 

  • Like 2
Posted

Longtime VB fan .. but, seldom to the extent of reading player bios.  Halter became an exception because it’s clear she’s the glue.  I learned from her bio that she’s from Indianapolis.  Interest was piqued further when Ramsey Gary, from a town not far from Indy, portaled to Texas from IU.

It would be foolish not to assume Halter played a role in getting a fellow Hoosier to Austin.  Anyone know whether they were friends and/or competitors in their high school or travel ball days?

Posted
2 hours ago, VirginiaLonghorn said:

Longtime VB fan .. but, seldom to the extent of reading player bios.  Halter became an exception because it’s clear she’s the glue.  I learned from her bio that she’s from Indianapolis.  Interest was piqued further when Ramsey Gary, from a town not far from Indy, portaled to Texas from IU.

It would be foolish not to assume Halter played a role in getting a fellow Hoosier to Austin.  Anyone know whether they were friends and/or competitors in their high school or travel ball days?

Here's one source

https://www.vbadrenaline.com/fan-page-news/new-longhorn-of-the-week-ramsey-gary

 

"Even though the two didn't know each other very well in Indiana, they, along with the rest of the littles, have meshed very quickly in Austin. "

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted

I’m sure they bonded over being from Indy. I can’t find what club Halter played on, and they’re a year apart, so maybe they know of each other but didn’t know each other well until Elliot was recruiting Gary to Texas 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
16 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I’m sure they bonded over being from Indy. I can’t find what club Halter played on, and they’re a year apart, so maybe they know of each other but didn’t know each other well until Elliot was recruiting Gary to Texas 

Halter played for Team Indiana Volleyball

Gary played for Munciana

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

Also AVW passed a 2.8 against Alabama! Our passing was really good against Bama, it was our first set attack errors and serving errors. AVW made up for her poor attacking with excellent passing all match 

Stafford: 2.40 (30 attempts)
Halter: 2.36 (14)
Gary: 2.12 (13)
AVW: 2.80 (10)

TEAM: 2.41
 

Conference only passing so far:

Stafford: 2.21 (135)
Halter: 2.42 (78)
AVW: 2.05 (78)
Gary: 2.23 (68)

Posted
On 10/10/2025 at 12:14 AM, Xminus6 said:

I don’t understand why Molly Phillips isn’t in contention.

Wait. Is this where we talk about the vball players we have crushes on? OK then. My personal crush is Ramsey Gary. Playing that Tenacious D & looking got damn good doing it ...

  • Drool 2
Posted

The committee's first top 16 reveal will be Sunday during the Pittsburgh-Louisville match

Wednesday
Florida @ #16 Tennessee, 6pm, SECN
Auburn @ #3 Kentucky, 6pm, SECN+

Thursday
#12 Purdue @ #22 Indiana, 6pm, BTN
#7 ASU @ #19 BYU, 7pm, ESPN+

Friday
#1 Nebraska @ Michigan State, 6pm, BTN
#8 SMU @ #4 Louisville, 6pm, ACCNX
Arkansas @ #2 Texas, 6:30pm, SECN+
OU @ #10 aggy, 6:30pm, SECN+
#23 UCLA @ #9 Wisconsin, 7pm, BTN

Saturday
#17 PSU @ Oregon, 9:30pm, BTN

Sunday
#6 Pitt @ #4 Louisville, 12pm, ESPN (Top 16 reveal)
#1 Nebraska @ Michigan, 1pm
#25 USC @ #9 Wisconsin, 1pm, BTN
Auburn @ #16 Tennessee, 1pm, SECN+
Florida @ #3 Kentucky, 2pm, ESPN
#14 Miami @ #5 Stanford, 3pm, ACCNX
OU @ #2 Texas, 7:30pm, ESPN

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
9 hours ago, TheBryMan81 said:

Ramsey Gary 😍 and everyone else too!

 

As an Advertising Creative, it's terrible. But I love seeing it for them. Hope they got paid well.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

Tomorrow's traffic cone is Arkansas (5-12, 1-5 SEC)

They opened the SEC season with a 3-2 win over Ole Miss and then lost 5 straight - 1-3, 0-3, 0-3, 1-3, 1-3.  Which included a string of dregs in Vandy, Georgia and South Carolina, where they managed to win 2 sets

They are hitting .210 as a team, have twice as many errors as aces (75 aces / 151 errors) and average 1.92 blocks per set.

Finally, a team we should out block easily! 

We are up to .304 as a team (.327 in SEC play), a respectable 64 aces to 97 errors and 2.01 blocks per set (boy that just keeps creeping down, at what point do we fall under 2 bps?)
 

Posted
39 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Tomorrow's traffic cone is Arkansas (5-12, 1-5 SEC)

They opened the SEC season with a 3-2 win over Ole Miss and then lost 5 straight - 1-3, 0-3, 0-3, 1-3, 1-3.  Which included a string of dregs in Vandy, Georgia and South Carolina, where they managed to win 2 sets

They are hitting .210 as a team, have twice as many errors as aces (75 aces / 151 errors) and average 1.92 blocks per set.

Finally, a team we should out block easily! 

We are up to .304 as a team (.327 in SEC play), a respectable 64 aces to 97 errors and 2.01 blocks per set (boy that just keeps creeping down, at what point do we fall under 2 bps?)
 

Texas' serving was much worse than that against Bama. They better get their shit together before the real competition. I don't get why all of the sudden it's a problem when they were doing really good until recently. It seems to hit like a virus. One starts sucking and then they all do. No reason for it, serving just isn't that difficult.

Posted
52 minutes ago, Hard Times said:

Texas' serving was much worse than that against Bama. They better get their shit together before the real competition. I don't get why all of the sudden it's a problem when they were doing really good until recently. It seems to hit like a virus. One starts sucking and then they all do. No reason for it, serving just isn't that difficult.

Guess they are just going thru some Hard Times!

Posted
55 minutes ago, Hard Times said:

Texas' serving was much worse than that against Bama. They better get their shit together before the real competition. I don't get why all of the sudden it's a problem when they were doing really good until recently. It seems to hit like a virus. One starts sucking and then they all do. No reason for it, serving just isn't that difficult.

People love to say serving isn't that difficult.

You know what is difficult? Actually winning a point on serve. In men's volleyball it's way worse because they hit so much harder, but even in women's volleyball the serving team only wins the point about 40% of the time. Against good teams that can plummet to 30% or lower. 

I would argue that serving effectively is the single most important competitive advantage a team can have. It's not the only advantage, or else a program like Indiana whose head coach emphasizes serving (as an example Texas' defensive specialist Ramsay Gary rarely served for Indiana as their #1 libero because of her lollipops, even though she's very good at keeping her serves in the court - her serves aren't difficult as you say, that's for sure). And yet Indiana struggles to make the tournament most years, and is very mid to bottom of the conference in the Big 10. That's just an easy example. 

When Texas won the national championships in 2022 and 2023, their tough serving across all 6 rotations was a big reason why. Not the only reason, mind you, but I'd argue the biggest reason simply because that was the biggest gap between Texas personnel and their opponents. In 2023 in particular, they practically served Stanford, Wisconsin, and Nebraska off the court. But it wasn't because it was so easy. It's because serving tough is so hard, but Texas was very good at it.

Texas is not as good this year at serving. Maybe they can be, but I don't think so. We just don't have the potential lineup for it across the 6 rotations. Stafford is awesome. Halter is very effective. But after that there's a dropoff. I like Swindle's serve, but statistically it's one of the worst on the team in terms of scoring on her service rotation. I feel like Gary rarely gets the opponent out of system. She has a pretty good short serve where she gets it in no man's land closer to the net, but if she's not accurate with it the opponent ends up with all 3 options on attack, which is extremely difficult to defend regardless of opponent. I'm not a huge fan of Kujundzic's serve. Spears is working on a top spin serve (where the server jumps real high and then sends it to the other side with extreme velocity) but she rarely breaks it out in matches because it's not reliable enough, yet. Her float serve is fine, but still has work to do. 

Binney comes in and serves with the double sub Elliott often employs. Again, her serve is fine but it's nothing to write home about. Miller also has a top spin serve that she dials down with its aggressiveness simply to better ensure she keeps it in court, but she's in a battle with Kujundzic to see whose serve is actually more effective, so not even sure she's going to be a real option or not. 

Also in the Alabama match the Crimson Tide had issues keeping their serve in as well. The real culprit in that match was attack errors and the inability to be terminal, specifically in the first set loss. The service errors were 6 to 5, whereas the hitting percentage was .000 for Texas (Texas currently ranks #4 in the country with .304, and ended up hitting .385, .366, and .237 in the next 3 sets). 

Bottom line, I don't worry about service errors with this team as much as I'm concerned about the ability to get high quality opponents out of system consistently when at the service line. Won't matter against most opponents, but once teams make it to the Elite Eight and beyond, they're going up against one of the top 8 teams in the country. That's where it matters. If you can't get an elite opponent out of system with your serve, you're not going to win many points from the service line. If they're able to do the teeniest better job of that, they win the set and eventually the match. 

A good test of that will be A&M and Kentucky. Kentucky has a really good shot at being a regional host. May even be seeded above Texas if they can beat them in Austin. They have the best OH duo in the country, a candidate for freshman setter of the year in Texas native O'Brien, and they're extremely well coached. I don't think A&M is going to be a top 8 team unless they can beat Texas in College Station, but they're right up there on the cusp.

Get those two teams out of system from the service line consistently, it shows we have a real chance when it gets deep in the tournament. If we can't, it shows a critical issue that hopefully can get addressed to some degree, although the options to do so are a bit limited. 

  • Hook 'Em 5
Posted
2 hours ago, Js1 said:

Tomorrow's traffic cone is Arkansas (5-12, 1-5 SEC)

They opened the SEC season with a 3-2 win over Ole Miss and then lost 5 straight - 1-3, 0-3, 0-3, 1-3, 1-3.  Which included a string of dregs in Vandy, Georgia and South Carolina, where they managed to win 2 sets

They are hitting .210 as a team, have twice as many errors as aces (75 aces / 151 errors) and average 1.92 blocks per set.

Finally, a team we should out block easily! 

We are up to .304 as a team (.327 in SEC play), a respectable 64 aces to 97 errors and 2.01 blocks per set (boy that just keeps creeping down, at what point do we fall under 2 bps?)
 

I think the Arkansas head coach is in trouble.

They're a far cry from their Elite Eight team from a couple of years ago. That group was so fun to watch. Pretty much everyone played all 6 rotations with a bunch of undersized front row attackers, led by 5'7 OH Jill Gillen. I guess it's not a formula easily duplicated. 

I have always liked Florida better from a talent perspective. They should be performing better than they are. The match against Tennessee was a nail biter 15-13 5th set win. It was at Tennessee, so that matters. Replacing a legend in Mary Wise is never easy, but Theiss isn't making his job any easier with some questionable long term personnel decisions. We already beat Tennessee, but I consider Florida a more dangerous squad talent wise.

After that this conference takes a big dropoff. I'm not a fan of either Auburn or Oklahoma, although both teams might make the tournament. It's a good thing Elliott scheduled such a challenging non con and the team did so well against it, because outside of Kentucky and A&M, this conference isn't doing us any favors this year. A far cry from a couple of years ago when Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas were all loaded for bear (Stucky ended up with an ACL which doomed Florida, but they were looking awesome before that). 

Posted
On 10/13/2025 at 6:55 PM, wood said:

Wait. Is this where we talk about the vball players we have crushes on? OK then. My personal crush is Ramsey Gary. Playing that Tenacious D & looking got damn good doing it ...

I'll allow it, I guess.

Screenshot_20251016_094639_Instagram.thumb.jpg.7fadb98addc7d52ca73df68898f7f59c.jpg

  • Drool 1
Posted
49 minutes ago, SL Xpress said:

People love to say serving isn't that difficult.

You know what is difficult? Actually winning a point on serve. In men's volleyball it's way worse because they hit so much harder, but even in women's volleyball the serving team only wins the point about 40% of the time. Against good teams that can plummet to 30% or lower. 

I would argue that serving effectively is the single most important competitive advantage a team can have. It's not the only advantage, or else a program like Indiana whose head coach emphasizes serving (as an example Texas' defensive specialist Ramsay Gary rarely served for Indiana as their #1 libero because of her lollipops, even though she's very good at keeping her serves in the court - her serves aren't difficult as you say, that's for sure). And yet Indiana struggles to make the tournament most years, and is very mid to bottom of the conference in the Big 10. That's just an easy example. 

When Texas won the national championships in 2022 and 2023, their tough serving across all 6 rotations was a big reason why. Not the only reason, mind you, but I'd argue the biggest reason simply because that was the biggest gap between Texas personnel and their opponents. In 2023 in particular, they practically served Stanford, Wisconsin, and Nebraska off the court. But it wasn't because it was so easy. It's because serving tough is so hard, but Texas was very good at it.

Texas is not as good this year at serving. Maybe they can be, but I don't think so. We just don't have the potential lineup for it across the 6 rotations. Stafford is awesome. Halter is very effective. But after that there's a dropoff. I like Swindle's serve, but statistically it's one of the worst on the team in terms of scoring on her service rotation. I feel like Gary rarely gets the opponent out of system. She has a pretty good short serve where she gets it in no man's land closer to the net, but if she's not accurate with it the opponent ends up with all 3 options on attack, which is extremely difficult to defend regardless of opponent. I'm not a huge fan of Kujundzic's serve. Spears is working on a top spin serve (where the server jumps real high and then sends it to the other side with extreme velocity) but she rarely breaks it out in matches because it's not reliable enough, yet. Her float serve is fine, but still has work to do. 

Binney comes in and serves with the double sub Elliott often employs. Again, her serve is fine but it's nothing to write home about. Miller also has a top spin serve that she dials down with its aggressiveness simply to better ensure she keeps it in court, but she's in a battle with Kujundzic to see whose serve is actually more effective, so not even sure she's going to be a real option or not. 

Also in the Alabama match the Crimson Tide had issues keeping their serve in as well. The real culprit in that match was attack errors and the inability to be terminal, specifically in the first set loss. The service errors were 6 to 5, whereas the hitting percentage was .000 for Texas (Texas currently ranks #4 in the country with .304, and ended up hitting .385, .366, and .237 in the next 3 sets). 

Bottom line, I don't worry about service errors with this team as much as I'm concerned about the ability to get high quality opponents out of system consistently when at the service line. Won't matter against most opponents, but once teams make it to the Elite Eight and beyond, they're going up against one of the top 8 teams in the country. That's where it matters. If you can't get an elite opponent out of system with your serve, you're not going to win many points from the service line. If they're able to do the teeniest better job of that, they win the set and eventually the match. 

A good test of that will be A&M and Kentucky. Kentucky has a really good shot at being a regional host. May even be seeded above Texas if they can beat them in Austin. They have the best OH duo in the country, a candidate for freshman setter of the year in Texas native O'Brien, and they're extremely well coached. I don't think A&M is going to be a top 8 team unless they can beat Texas in College Station, but they're right up there on the cusp.

Get those two teams out of system from the service line consistently, it shows we have a real chance when it gets deep in the tournament. If we can't, it shows a critical issue that hopefully can get addressed to some degree, although the options to do so are a bit limited. 

They need to work on bettering their service game in matches like this Arkansas one, and really, most of the rest of their SEC opponents.  Take some chances with the serves and gain confidence in these upcoming matches.  

Once the tournament starts they need to have a very good feel with how aggressive to be with their serves.  Definitely agree it was the key for the NC runs in 22', and especially in 23'.  But, on the flip side, a team can also sabotage a match against a strong opponent in the tournament with constant service errors.  We have seen this happen as well. Nothing more frustrating than to not have a chance in a point at a crucial time in a close game/match because of repeated service errors. 

In 23' they really seemed to elevate their service game in the tournament. Hopefully they will improve in that area the rest of the way this season.

Posted
13 minutes ago, sunset87 said:

They need to work on bettering their service game in matches like this Arkansas one, and really, most of the rest of their SEC opponents.  Take some chances with the serves and gain confidence in these upcoming matches.  

 

Part of me thinks they were trying to be more aggressive against an overmatched opponent.   We had 17 service errors against Bama, with 6 of them in the first set and then 11 over the next 3 sets.  We dialed it back a little to a more manageable 3.6 per set (still not great). We had 12 in a 5 setter against Tennessee (2.4 per set)

It's not like we forgot how to serve - we had 3 against Creighton (1 per set), 4 against Wisconsin (1.33 per set), 8 against Stanford (1.6 per set), 4 against Louisville (0.8 per set), 2 against ASU (.67 per set), 7 against TCU (2.33 per set), 6 against Baylor (2 per set).

Texas averages 1.94 serving errors per set, and our last 2 matches inflated that quite a bit (12 and 17).  Only 2 matches we have hit double digit serving errors - the last 2. 

Team service errors is not an NCAA stat, but just browsing some of the top 10: 

Nebraska - 2.01 (109 in 54 sets)
Texas - 1.94 (97 in 50 sets)
Louisville - 1.96 (114 in 58 sets)
Pitt - 2.55 (156 in 61 sets)
Kentucky - 2.5 (130 in 52 sets)
Stanford - 3.32  (196 in 59 sets)
Wisconsin - 2.88 (130 in 45 sets)
ASU - 2.71 (148 in 55 sets)

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

In the grand scheme of things, we have been hard to beat because:

  • We only give our opponents just under 2 free points per set on a service error (1.94)
  • We only give our opponents just over 2 free points per set on a non-block error (2.08)
  • We give our opponents 2.5 points per set on a point scored off their block
  • We gain 1.22 points per set off acing our opponent

On the flip side:

  • Our opponents are giving us 2.3 free points per set on a service error
  • We are getting 3.29 free points per set on non-block errors by our opponents
  • We are getting 2.01 points per set off our block
  • Our opponents gain 1.0 point per set by acing us

Texas gives away 7.52 points and gets back 8.82 points.  And with us hitting .128 points higher than our opponents, that is why we are still unbeaten. 

Posted (edited)

Not Texas Volleyball related but we seem to have some very knowledgeable folks on here about the game.

What would you say is the most effective serve for a player to learn? My daughter is playing 14U this year. Her serve has developed a lot over the last two years. 2 years ago she could get the ball over the net about 5% of the time from the service line and those would be dribblers that tape. Now she can consistently get hard serves crossing the net within 24” from the top of the net and landing deep (25’ or so).

She’s been working on spot serving and trying to learn both Float and Topspin. Her placement right now is pretty darn good. She can hit corners and lines within 18” or so with some velocity. But Float has been challenging for her to learn and frankly I don’t know that she jumps high enough for Topspin to be really beneficial.

But what skills do you guys see as most beneficial at this level? Jump? Float? Topspin? Short? Placement? Low to the net? I know they’re not mutually exclusive but just factors that she’s been working on.

Edited by Xminus6
Posted
45 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Feel like a jump float that has a ton of drop is what causes the most aces. 

Agreed.  When I played a long time ago the float was much harder to pass than a topspin.  

One thing I did with my float serves I found effective was holding the ball in my left hand with the inflation hole facing the opponent and tossing the ball with zero spin so the valve still faces the opponent after I hit it.  Hit the serve with a short fast swing with minimal follow through.  The ball should fly without much spin and as it travels forward the weight of the inflation valve rotates downward causing the ball to sink.  

Posted
48 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

Agreed.  When I played a long time ago the float was much harder to pass than a topspin.  

One thing I did with my float serves I found effective was holding the ball in my left hand with the inflation hole facing the opponent and tossing the ball with zero spin so the valve still faces the opponent after I hit it.  Hit the serve with a short fast swing with minimal follow through.  The ball should fly without much spin and as it travels forward the weight of the inflation valve rotates downward causing the ball to sink.  

So basically a knuckleball serve. That’s how I would always serve when I played volleyball, but I didn’t pay attention to where the valve was. A knuckleball serve seems to have the best accuracy to receiving difficulty ratio of any serve and I wish we utilized it more 

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...