KANSAS CITY, Missouri – We get it. I’m tired of hearing about the SEC’s dominance. The selection committee favors them, yada yada, because “it means more.”
But wait. …We’re talking about volleyball here.
For the first time in conference history, two SEC teams will compete for the volleyball national championship on Sunday afternoon when No. 2 Kentucky takes on No. 6 Texas A&M at the T-Mobile Center (3:30 ET, ABC). It took the league nearly four decades to celebrate its first national championship when Craig Skinner’s Kentucky Wildcats won in 2020 — actually the spring of 2021 because of COVID-19.
But this pairing is not a coincidence. The Southeastern Conference had three teams (Kentucky, Texas and Texas A&M) ranked in the top 10 in the final regular-season poll, and Wisconsin’s upset of Texas prevented the bottom four from taking three-quarters of the SEC. Sunday’s result would ensure that four teams currently in the SEC have won the national championship in the past six years (Kentucky 2020, Texas 2022 and 2023), even though Texas does not join the conference until 2024.
Skinner opened his news conference Friday by acknowledging the transformation.
“Kudos to the SEC and our league coaches for positioning our conference to be an elite league in the sport of NCAA volleyball,” Skinner said.
Skinner, who was an assistant when Nebraska won the national championship in 2000, knew the SEC’s paucity of dominance could hinder recruiting when he took the Kentucky job in 2005. So, he used the phrase, “Come join us and be the first SEC team to win a national championship.”
“To be really good, you have to invest a lot of time,” Skinner said. “I was part of a national championship program. I just wanted people to feel what it means. Not just winning it, but the work and time and competitive desire it takes to get to that point, because that’s life.”
“So, I think us doing that broke down the doors that Kentucky could do it again or anyone else in the league could do it. We’re very proud to do it.”
Non-conference scheduling, investment in schools and aggressive coaching recruitments played a role in the rise, said Tiffany Daniels, an associate commissioner and chief operating officer at the SEC. A little pride didn’t hurt either.
Daniels said when Greg Sankey became commissioner in 2015, he noticed that volleyball was the only sport among the conference’s 21 offerings that did not produce a national title. He met with coaches in the conference and asked them what the SEC could do to help win a championship. She said the coaches “really paid attention to this question and started thinking strategically about how to move forward.
“I think that’s what we’re seeing, the results of the fruits of that labor,” Daniels said.
Another thing that may have helped the league in the NCAA Tournament is the return of the SEC Tournament this fall. This was volleyball’s first conference championship in two decades, and Texas A&M coach Jimmy Morrison admits he was “a little unsure” about the prospect at first. None of the other major conferences — the Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 — hold conference tournaments.
“Commissioner Sankey begged and pleaded with us,” Morrison said. “They wanted to build something – and that’s a bad word, but – marketing around it, which is not a bad word anymore because it has to go that way for our sport to be viable and for a lot of things to happen.
“I think they did a great job of that. Suddenly we got really good volleyball against really good teams in pressure situations.”
It was a precursor to things to come.
Kentucky and Texas A&M were pressure-tested as they reached the final. The Wildcats rebounded from a set against Wisconsin in the national semifinals and took a five-set lead. The Aggies escaped a two-set hole against Louisville in the regional semifinals and then upset Nebraska in a pressure-packed fifth in the regional final.
Both teams like to talk about how much determination and mental toughness got them to the championship game. Now, there’s another win to be had in the 2025 NCAA volleyball season. The only thing that’s certain is that an SEC team will claim it.
Here are four more stories to watch during the championship game.
Pin strength
Traditionally, the best hitters in the title game claim the title for their team. Last year, it was Penn State’s Jess Mrozek. The year before that, it was Madison Skinner from Texas. The year before that, it was Texas’ Logan Eggleston. Well, you get the idea.
There are several strong pins in Sunday’s championship match — on both sides. The Wildcats feature Purdue transfers Eva Hudson (4.59 kills per set) and Brooklyn DeLeye (4.62 kills per set), and feature Aggies Logan Lednicky (4.11 kills per set) and Kyndal Stowers (3.50 kills per set). They had 351 kills in the tournament.
But it won’t just be a competition to see which team can beat the other. Hudson said it may come down to who can “overpower” the other.
“Who lasts the longest, honestly,” she said. “And I think that’s what most of these matches end up being, especially during the Final Four, right? Players like Kendall and Logan never stop fighting. They’ll never stop swinging away. And we’re the same way.”
In Thursday’s semifinal against Wisconsin, Hudson dominated the fourth and fifth sets. Her final kill of the game sealed the Wildcats’ fate and netted her 29 kills for a .455 hitting percentage. In the sweep against Pitt, Stowers and Lednicky led their program to its first title match with a combined 30 kills. When asked about the rise in kills in the past few matches, Stowers said she was at a loss for words.
“Pure gratitude. This is crazy,” Stowers said. “It’s an absolutely crazy experience. We’ve had confidence in ourselves all year. From the first game of the season, we knew we could do it.”
Do you remember October?
Kentucky beat the Aggies 21-25, 25-22, 25-15, 27-25 in a thrilling game on Oct. 8 in College Station. Texas A&M clearly made another run in December, knocking off No. 20 TCU, No. 9 Louisville, No. 1 Nebraska and No. 4 Pitt in the postseason. “It feels like a really long time ago,” A&M outside hitter Emily Hellmuth said of the regular season game. “It’s hard to remember honestly, so much has happened since then. I remember after the fourth set, everyone, including all the fans and us, felt – I don’t know – it was an overwhelming feeling, we knew we were going to go to the fifth set. I think we left feeling like there was a lot of unfinished business there.”
Kentucky outside hitter Asia Thigpen noticed the Aggies’ big block at regionals last week in Lincoln. “They have grown as a team since then [October]said Thigpen. We did that too. “I think continuing to instill confidence in ourselves that we can do that.”
echoed Hudson Thigpen.
“Both of our teams have improved so much since then, it’s like playing with a whole new team,” Hudson said. “And I mean, kind of a similar game plan, but you have to be ready for anything at this stage of the tournament as well.”
Check the vibe
A slew of fans were supposed to travel from Nebraska via Interstate 29 to Kansas City this weekend, but Texas A&M crushed those plans last week due to an upset by the No. 1 Cornhuskers. However, the atmosphere remained festive in the City of Fountains.
Last year’s final attracted an NCAA postseason record 21,860 fans to the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky. It didn’t hurt that Louisville was playing Penn State. (The home team lost in four matches.)
The sport has grown in popularity each season, and the interest in Kansas City this weekend was no exception. Downtown restaurants had wait lists, and the crowds were lively at the T-Mobile Center Thursday night for the semifinals.
“The atmosphere was amazing,” Morrison said.
Attendance for Thursday night’s semifinal session was 18,322 — a sellout, the NCAA said. The empty seats in the lower bowl during the first game were mostly group allotments that were eventually occupied by fans who had not yet shown up for the second game, said Christine Fassbender, the NCAA’s director of tournaments and alliances. “There’s a lot of excitement,” Fassbender said.
Nebraska fans, still going through the stages of grief, helped fill the arena. Thursday night, the crowd erupted when a fan of Husker gear appeared on the video board.
Morrison noticed all the red.
“One of the things I really respect about the Nebraska fans is that a lot of them showed up,” he said. “I know there’s been some things on social media, disappointment and all that. I mean this: If we can do what I think we can do at Texas A&M, I think the 12th Man can be that too, where he’s passionate about volleyball, and he might get to the quarterfinals, regardless of whether we’re in it or not.
“…We need to grow volleyball fans, take a Nebraska card in there and go. I thought the crowd was great. I had a bunch of likes. I couldn’t tell if it was a ‘good job’ or a ‘concert’ from the Nebraska fans as I walked out.” [Thursday] “Night.”
X factors
Although Hudson and Daily make most of the headlines at Kentucky, Hudson believes the X-factors for her team are middle blockers Lizzie Carr and Thigpen.
“When Lizzy Carr takes off, we’re almost unstoppable,” Hudson said. “She fires up the team. But we also have Asia Thigpen, who is one of the most competitive people I’ve ever known, and she makes me better. Without them, we wouldn’t be here.”
Hudson added that Thigpen, who stands 5-foot-11, is often overlooked because of her height – emphasizing her ability to be their secret weapon on the field.
The X factor the Aggies are heading into this game may be their ability to play with what their team described as “a lot of grit.” They may also have nine seniors — let’s not forget middle blocker extraordinaire Ifenna Cos-Okpalla — on their roster who are poised to make their last varsity game their most memorable yet.
“I want to finish my college career as a winner,” senior Ava Underwood said. “We go into the gym every day with the mentality that we’re going to be the grittiest team out there. We all want to play for each other. We want to win for each other.”
In his third season with the Aggies, Morrison led his program to its first four national championship games and first national championship game. After sweeping Pitt in the semifinals, he credited the seniors with changing the future.
“We’ve built this. Not just a team that can get to the quarterfinals and play in a national championship this year, but something I think will continue,” Morrison said. “This is what I came to Texas A&M to do – to build something that will last. This group has helped us do that.”