The Texas A&M volleyball team enters the top 25 this week, well-deserved in my opinion. The win over Baylor on Saturday was big and of course your earlier win over the Huskers was great for you all, too. We'll have another crack at you in November. :-)

1. Penn State (53) 18-0
2. Texas (7) 12-0
3. Hawai'i 15-2
4. Washington 15-1
5. Stanford 11-4
6. Minnesota 14-4
7. Nebraska 12-4
8. Kentucky 17-1
9. Florida 12-3
10. Illinois 12-3
11. Michigan 16-3
12. UCLA 13-5
13. Iowa State 14-3
14. California 9-6
15. Oregon 12-3
16. Southern California 13-4
17. Florida State 15-2
18. Arizona 14-3
19. Baylor 17-2
20. Saint Louis 12-5
21. UC Irvine 14-3
22. Texas A&M 12-3
23. San Diego 11-4
24. LSU 12-4
25. Long Beach State 11-4


[This message has been edited by Husker (edited 10/12/2009 6:37p).]

Good on 'em. I hope they can move up and not move out. We should have a top 25 team every year - and a semi-regular trip to the Sweet 16+.

Gig 'em Aggies. Enjoy your new (new to you) digs.

Whoop!!! I'm so glad we finally got in there. Time to keep moving up!

The match @ ISU on Wednesday is another big one. If we find a way to win that one, we are legit.

Whoop!

If we upset Iowa State on Wednesday, I think there's no reason for us to not move up to around 16 or 17, which would be huge considering where our program has been the last few years. I don't know if the voters consider this, but with how heavily we're relying on our Freshmen in the middle, this team has no where to go but up. Wonder if the voters will take that into consideration.

Most of the voters probably couldn't even tell you three of our players. They have reports prepared for them each week detailing the results of the previous week including scores and maybe a few stats. However, as long as we keep winning, we will stay in the poll. Even a loss to Iowa State in Ames probably wouldn't hurt us that much, especially if we can take a set or two off of them. The important thing at this point is to beat the teams we are supposed to beat and not have any let downs against lower quality teams. We have two signature wins on our resume now in beating Nebraska and Baylor, so the important thing is to take care of business in conference. Any more victories over ranked teams are just icing on the cake (although I think we have a great shot of knocking off Texas at Reed and probably will play two very close matches against Iowa State.)

The thing that has surprised me the most about this team is how quickly freshman libero Tori Mellinger has adjusted to the college game. Her excellent serve reception has really been the biggest difference between last year's team and this year's. We had a good offense last year, but we couldn't ever pass consistently well enough to run our full offense. This year we have started running a lot quicker sets to the pins but the reason we are able to do that is because we have three great serve receivers on the floor at all times in Batis, Banse, and Mellinger. Mellinger has also shown the ability to come up with some spectacular digs and you can see in our matches how opposing hitters begin to get frustrated because so many balls that they think should be a kill come back up behind our defense and they end up pressing too hard and starting to make errors (I thought this was particularly evident in the match at Baylor, where we racked up an outstanding 86 digs in 4 sets. )

Congrats to the ladies and good luck wednesday night. Maybe we can climb even higher in the rankings!

Whoop!

Hey Drumbeat, I see you are just as analytical in your posts about volleyball as basketball. I think you hit the nail on the head about Mellinger.

We watch lots of volleyball - our local school is ranked #3 in state right now, and has been to the state semi's for the past two years. The hitters get all the glory, but without a good first pass, which allows a good set, the hits don't happen. You can watch many HS teams warm up that appear to have great hitters, but they don't make the kills because of poor service receiving and passing.

It's great to see this improvement in the Ags; I'd love for our Seniors to have a great year before they graduate.

Yeah, volleyball is actually my number one sport and the only one I play. Basketball is just fun for me to watch, but I do tend to over analyze just about anything I watch (which is why I can't stand watching the football team right now, and why the past few years I have preferred watching the women's basketball team to the men's)

I need to find myself at Reed to get over the tough football and soccer seasons. Looks like I'll get a chance in November.

drumbeat, the CU match really demonstrated the importance of the first pass. CU was awful at it, someone in the back row would receive the ball and essentially bump it straight up in the air, and then the team would scramble and usually set from 10+ feet away from the net. When we started struggling, it seemed to be a lot of the same problem.

Thanks for pointing out that info. I've watched a lot of volleyball while here, but never played to where I'd know stuff like that. It definitely helped me understand the match a lot more.

moved up a spot. need to take care of OU tonight.

Very nice. As a casual observer I was under the impression that the program was stagnant under Corbelli. Keep it up, Ags!

Fun while it lasted!

Losing to a lower rated conference team at home 3-0 is not a good sign that we are improving. I guess it is a sign, good or bad, that we're inconsistent.

Inconsistent at best. How do you have the ability to beat Nebraska, but can't get the job done against OU? On OU's behalf, Barker is the best setter in the Big 12. She is quicker to the ball and more precise with her sets than anyone else. It's a shame she isn't taller or she would be a viable candidate for the USA team. She is the hardest setter to read where she will set...defenses stay a half step slower than OU's offense because of her ability.

OU is a great defensive team in terms of frustrating the hitters and I agree that Barker is a great setter. OU also just beat Baylor on saturday so maybe they are starting to come on strong about now. Nebraska has elevated themselves several notches since we played them and I wouldn't expect to beat them again if we played today. It will be a shame if OU, BU, and A&M don't all make the NCAA's because I think they are all tournament caliber teams but they haven't been getting much respect from the AVCA poll voters. OU probably needs to knock off either Texas, Nebraska, or Iowa State to really set themselves up for a good chance of making the NCAA's, but I think all three of those middle teams in the Big 12 are fairly even. Good defense, good setters, pretty good ball control but lacking big terminal hitters like a Penn State, Texas, or Washington.

As far as last night goes, I think we really looked out of system in serve receive all night. I heard Mary Batis has been sick, so maybe some of the other girls weren't feeling well either. Mellinger looked to struggle quite a bit on receive and things tend to go downhill fast when you can't make a good first contact. Ammerman got way too many sets and it became too easy for OU to read and stop her from being an effective hitter. We also seemed to go away from our quicker sets to the pins which had been working so well, but again that likely stems from ball control issues.

We have a bye this Saturday so hopefully we can take the chance to get healthy and shore up our passing so that we have a good shot against Texas next Wednesday. This team absolutely has the potential to hang with Texas if we pass and serve at a high level, and we should have a pretty good crowd turnout since it is Texas. I think Texas playing @A&M and @Iowa State will likely be their only real challenges left in conference play, so it'd be nice if we could stop them from running the table.

i agree with drumbeat. this team IS better. last night was an abberation.

quote:

---

OU also just beat Baylor on saturday so maybe they are starting to come on strong about now.

---

It's a decent win, but that's a Baylor team that was/is freefalling now that they're playing tougher competition week in and week out.

They had gotten beat up by us and then absolutely demolished by Nebraska, both in Wavo.

Since Nebraska is a top 10 team shouldn't it be expected that Baylor would lose to them? I think we are better than Baylor and Baylor is better than OU, but we are all very close to one another and any team could win on any given night out of those three. I still think Baylor will make the tournament unless they start losing to teams like KSU, Colorado, or Tech.

I didn't say anything about Baylor simply losing to Nebraska.

I'm talking about how Nebraska made it look easier than easy.

We're IN the tournament!!! Congrats!!