Texas sweeps Wisconsin to advance to championship
Thursday night’s opening set between Wisconsin and Texas played out exactly like most everyone expected.
The top-seeded Badgers and fourth-seeded Longhorns both streaked into their NCAA volleyball tournament Final Four clash as well-matched titans. The contest appeared perfectly balanced on paper and hewed to those expectations amid kinetic first-set rallies, fleeting scoring runs and post-kill roars.
Then Texas coach Jerritt Elliott called timeout with his team trailing 20-16, and the atmosphere changed. The Longhorns feverish rally resulted in a whiteknuckle 26-24 win, and from that moment on Elliott’s group dictated the tenor of the match.
By the end of the night at CHI Health Center in Omaha, Neb., Texas (27-1) was reveling in a three-set sweep of once-undefeated Wisconsin (16-1). With their 26-24, 25-19, 25-23 win, the Longhorns will advance to face No. 2 seed Kentucky on Saturday in the national championship match.
“What a great match,” Elliott said during a postmatch Zoom interview. “I thought it was a war out there. Wisconsin defense was so good, it was a backand-forth kind of battle, what we expected. “Our team just executed late in Game 1 and late in Game 3 and we came away with a victory. But love the way that our fight was. I loved that our demeanor was good. And we had lots of different people contributing.”
Texas initially struggled against the towering height of Wisconsin, powered by 6-foot-8 All-American middle blocker Dana Rettke. It couldn’t finish off points and committed too many errors, eventually forcing Elliott to signal for that fateful timeout.
The Longhorns emerged from that huddle rejuvenated, resilient and refocused. They closed the set on a 10-4 run with tournament stars Logan Eggleston (17 kills, nine digs), Skylar Fields (12 kills) and Asjia O’Neal (11 kills, three blocks) delivering a series of overpowering kills off skillful feeds from setter Jhenna Gabriel (42 assists).
Texas also got crucial contributions from players like Brionne Butler (11 kills, .625 hitting percentage), Molly Phillips (four kills, two blocks) and Nalani Iosia (12 digs, two service aces).
And credit is due to Texas’ defense as an overall unit, which stymied the Badgers like no other team has in 2021.
“We just really stuck with our game plan, just focusing on what our side was doing, not what their side was doing,” Butler said. “They have really good hitters. We knew they were going to get their kills; just move on to the next play, focus on our side.”
The Badgers climbed out of an 8-2 hole in the third set, even seizing an 18-17 lead with a four-point run. But Texas had an answer for whatever Wisconsin threw its way. And Elliott got the last laugh against the team that knocked UT out of the 2013 Final Four, winning a challenge to confirm Eggleston’s match-winning kill in the third set.
“It was definitely a long minute to wait,” Butler said, laughing about those chest-tightening 60 seconds. “But once we heard the call it was just a free for all. Everybody just ran out. We were so excited, so pumped up. But if the wait was well worth it, I’ll tell you that.”
Waking up at 5:30 a.m. for 7 a.m. training sessions before reverting back to full-time students. Adjusting to a staggered season schedule spread across seven months due to the coronavirus pandemic. All that was worth it. Now, in the wake of its stunning dominance against a Wisconsin team that hadn’t lost a match, or even a single opening set all season, Texas turns its eyes toward the ultimate prize: a third NCAA national championship.