Volleyball posted their first Big XII win against Oklahoma. Their next home game isn't until Sunday (16), but here's to having everyone out there cheering them on. They can still turn this season around as long as they have their fans backing them.

Way to go Ags, keep it up.

It's great to finally get a win. Onward and upward from here!

I think we have the hardest schedule to open conference in the country. So to start 0-4, while disappointing, was a very real possibility. I think everyone thought we would beat Kansas and possibly Missouri, but we knew tu and Nebraska would be hard.

On a side note, did Kendra play, she was out for the tu game and I dont remember seeing anything mentioned on here about it.

I don't know if kendra played. I heard through the grapevine at the tu game that she had broken something, but it didn't look like it. I shall put some research into this one.

oh, and I totally agree on us having the hardest opening big XII schedule in the conference. That's why the fans need to be there full force to let the girls know that we understand and we're still behind them 100%.

No, we have the hardest opening schedule in the country, except for a couple of the NACWAA teams. Seven opponents ranked in the top 25 leaves very little wiggle room for mistakes. I'm personally disappointed we weren't able to take a win from either the USC or Florida match, but honestly the schedule this year is way over our heads. I was initially excited about hosting a Regional Final this year, but when the schedule was released I thought, "Oh my god, we might not even make it!"

That's true. I wasn't thinking on the larger scale. Have faith though. I'm sure we can pull through.

We are 1-5 in Conference. The question should be.....why? Why are that many schools in the Big-12 able to get better players than we are?

We have what 4 seniors, maybe. That is a big reason. We also played a lot of Freshmen for most of the tu match. That has alot to do with the slow start, and Kendra being injured didnt help matters at all. And in case nobody saw it, Mizzou was up 2-0 on Nebraska before NU decided to stop playing around. We havent been beat by slouches at all, Nebraska is predicted to go undefeated this year, MU almost pulled an upset and will probably finish in the top 10 if they keep up their play, tu is a perinial top 25 team. I dont know much about the Kansas program, but its hard to win on the road in the big 12. Other then MAYBE a Pac 10 school, we play more top 25 teams this year IN CONFERENCE then anybody else in the country. Add the other top 25 OOC matches, and if we can survive the big 12 these girls will be poised for one helluva run. Especially for years to come.

I repeat. Why can't we outrecruit virtually any other school in the Big-12? If we can't, we can always claim 'strength of schedule' as the reason for our record, but we'll never compete for a Big-12 championship.

Because we can't really offer anything that any of the other big schools in the Big 12 can. While with most other sports we can at least pitch the fan support angle, in volleyball we don't really have more support than say Nebraska. As long as that is the case, most Big 12 schools will be fairly close in winning the big volleyball recruits.

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are you serious?

Hey rook, stick to soccer. We're a top 10 team in the nation when it comes to attendance.

As far as why we can't recruit, I can't say that I know. We've got a great coach, great facilities, a good recent history of winning and a ton of support from the AD and fans. It's not like we haven't pulled in good recruits recently though. The past two classes seem very talented. They just need some experience.

Because we're playing a majority of sophmores and freshman and everyone else is playing a majority of juniors and seniors. Our recruiting is fine, we lost a huge part of our team last year when Melissa graduated, and its taken some time to fill her role. If you've been to a game, you know we dont lack for talent, but lack of experience is a killer.

Look at the rosters for the last decade. Laurie and John haven't gone after or haven't been able to get top recruits nationwide since the end of the 1990s. Slowly our roster has come to be Texas-only. Not pulling recruits from out of state increases the competition tremendously. For the last two years Nebraska has gotten top athletes from all over the continent, and Texas has transplanted many equally scattered tall trees. A team of some of the top local players will by generally lose to a team of the top players from respective local areas.

Experience counts, also, and I agree that this is a young team compared to teams of the last several years. But it seems to me there's some missing spark this year, more than just Melissa. I don't know if it's chemistry or coaching or recruiting, or something else entirely.

Yes we have had fairly good recruiting classes the last few years, but so have all the other big schools in the Big 12. We may be one of the top 10 teams in attendence, but we are still within a few hundred in attendence from the other schools. We have great fan support, but you can't really pitch a few hundred more people to recruits and have it be a great amount of success.

Experience is also a problem this year with Melissa gone. It will also be a problem next year since we are losing Laura and Kari. Its great to see the freshmen getting so many hours now so the transition will not be as rough as it was this year. We also face the problem of having so many other schools in conference in the top 25. Right now, there are 4 other Big 12 schools in the top 25.

All this leads to it being very back and forth in recruiting. We may win the big recruit over the other Big 12 schools one year and then another school will win it the next. No one school in the Big 12 is really capable of outrecruiting the others. It is going to be a very close, hard fought battle every year.

Ironically, we won't be competing with Nebraska for another couple years - anyone other than a top 1-5 NATIONAL recruit is not going there because they'll end up riding the bench until 2007. And due to location and culture, we're not getting top5 recruits anyway.

I agree that after several years of everyone talking about it coming down the line, 2005 appears to be the year when parity breaks loose. There is no longer a clear line between a handful of California schools and the rest of us. The BigXII this year can go up against any conference for strength of schedule, and we can expect to have lots of representatives in the NCAA tournament. Having a 'good' team is no longer enough to get'r done in BigXII volleyball. They need to be grrrrrrrreat!