KANSAS CITY, MO ― Texas A&M believed it could make it to the NCAA volleyball Final Four and the national championship match, even if the rest of the sports world didn’t.
‘We have had faith in ourselves all year. From the first game of the season, we knew we were capable of this,’ outside hitter Kyndal Stowers said after the Aggies swept No. 1 Pitt on Thursday night. ‘Now living it, it’s like, ‘Wow. This is insane.”
The Aggies, who will play Kentucky for the national championship Sunday (3:30 p.m., ABC), call themselves as the ‘grittiest team in volleyball.’ The word ‘grit’ is on hats they created and metaphorically woven into every victory during the NCAA tournament.
Texas A&M’s last loss was to the Texas Longhorns during the SEC tournament on November 24, one of four this season. Aggies coach Jamie Morrison said the team had mixed emotions about playing a conference tournament before the NCAA tournament the following week.
The SEC tournament is three matches in three days, a grind to get through. Morrison maintains his team needed it. He likened the conference tournament to playoff experience, which he believes gave the Aggies, who had never been to the Final Four, an advantage during their NCAA tournament run. Morrison’s team beat four ranked opponents, including No. 1 overall seed Nebraska, which hadn’t lost all season, and No. 1 seed Pitt, which hadn’t been swept the entire season until Thursday.
‘I’m really thankful that every opponent that we’ve had has pushed us in some way,’ Morrison said. ‘Because the more you’re in those uncomfortable situations ― and we’ve talked a lot about discomfort during this and how we’ve earned the right to be in it more, but ― the more we’re in it, the more we get comfortable, the more we’re used to being ourselves in those moments. If you have a slip-up, you can learn from it.’
Senior opposite hitter Logan Lednicky says the Aggies ‘just know how to dig in [at] the right times.’ She believes reaching this level has been a long time coming for Texas A&M, and they have the right group of players to win it all.
The belief from Texas A&M started with Lednicky and senior libero Ava Underwood’s boyfriends. Underwood recently credited the duo’s significant others for introducing the NCAA tournament motto: ‘Why not us?’
‘I know it’s probably like beating a dead horse, but y’all keep hearing, ‘Why not us?’ Literally, why not us?’ Lednicky said during the Aggies’ post-match availability on Thursday. ‘We are considered the underdog in a lot of these moments just because we haven’t been here before. But we know we have all the right pieces. So why not us?’
Not a single player on Texas A&M or Kentucky’s roster has experience playing in the Final Four, let alone in a national championship. (The only person who has title experience is the Wildcats head coach Craig Skinner, who won a championship with Kentucky in 2020.) On Sunday, both teams have a chance in the already historic all-SEC title match to make history again.
The Aggies plan to win by doing it their way, which may or may not be conventional. The players are having fun, and that includes Stowers letting out the softest ‘boom’ and flashing a smile to her teammates after a significant kill or middle blocker Ifenna Cos-Okpalla unleashing her signature walk away after sealing Texas A&M’s spot in the national title match. The Aggies have also made almost daily TikTok videos, a full coordinated team effort, according to Stowers, and meant to show the world they are ‘just a bunch of goofy people who love being around each other and having a good time.”We started this season talking about who you are as a human being, then in the middle of the season, we talked about who you are as a competitor,’ Morrison said. ‘When you get in these big moments, you get sways of four points, then it’s a game of momentum because you start losing track of who you are.
‘On a stage with literally the brightest lights I’ve ever seen up here, they’re able to be themselves; they’re able to be happy, joyful … That’s the thing I’m most proud of.’