mymy32

Best I've seen them play. Henley finally seems to be figuring it out at the net, and she even had a few BICs today. It's interesting that they finally seem to be comfortable in the 6-2 when they clearly weren't comfortable at all at the beginning of the year. Onward.

Vann hit 6-6 from 3. Vic had all 5 freshmen playing out there for a chunk of the 4th, and Baylor still had a few of their starters in. They held up well. SEC will be a different ballgame, as they say, but you can see the potential. Besides the lack of experience behind the 3 Bs, this team is a post player short, in my opinion. I don't think we're going to get any minutes from Hose in any of the big games. They're gonna have to ride or die with Breya, and go small ball with Etute if Breya gets in foul trouble.

Upgrade in exhibition opponent.

Not sure, but there was some sort of media availability. A few of the Texas beat writers had some post game comments by Cori Close. One was giving Texas props for playing in their practice uniforms due to whatever issue UCLA had with theirs. The other was complaining (again) about how "aggressive" Texas is and how it is, somehow, "inhibiting the growth of the game."

Exhibition. First one for Texas. Believe it was UConn's second.

First exhibition game for Texas, second for UConn. Vic had freshmen Bjorn, Etute, and Crittendon guarding Strong. Welcome to college, ladies. As I said on IT, if a team isn't going to take a lot of 3s, they better not let the other team take a lot. But a lot of UConn's 3s came on defensive breakdowns from Texas. Not all, but quite a few. That being said, it wasn't unexpected to have those breakdowns with all the new and young players still getting their sea legs. Also, Texas needs to take more 3s. At least a few more. Book looks better than ever. Need more from Bry. And not a good sign to have Breya already dealing with foul trouble. Lizzie did well in her minutes, I thought, especially being a true frosh running pg for Vic, at UConn, in her first playing time. We need a few players to step up on offense. Not gonna take too much negative from today on that front, given the context. I'm sure players like Bjorn, Crittendon, Etute, and Clark will all settle in as they adjust to the speed of the game and more shots will fall. Hopefully the same for Vann as she gets more familiar with the offense. Lots for Vic to take from this game. Will be really interesting to see how they adjust over the preseason and into non-conference play. They have insane talent. It's up to Vic to get everyone not named Booker (who is already there) to tap into it more consistently.

I echo what six said about the serving. I'll also add that, being there in person, yes, the sets weren't great (especially Rella's at times), but the biggest differences seemed to be 1) an almost non-existent block, 2) the inability to terminate on the attacks, and 3) not having the defense set up right behind the non-existent block. All these seem to be intertwined. At the beginning of the match, it looked like our block was giving them line. And to their credit, FL was hitting it. But our back row defenders were set up too far into the court to even attempt a dig. I get trying to make them hit it out, but after they scored a few times, adjust! And I can't tell you how many times our hitters seemed to hit right at their back row players. Never seemed to swing for the open floor. And then their hitters always found the big swaths of court with no defender near, and we got to see our gals do the elegant yet useless swan dive to dig a ball that was already bouncing into the crowd. Is that a scouting issue? I don't know. But I can't remember a Texas team with so many highly ranked pins that just can't regularly find the floor.

I do think Elliott changed his approach to littles... at least somewhat. He has said several times that he feels you need 3 good back row defenders to win a championship. He had that in the back to back years, then didn't in 24. He made sure to bring in good little for last year, but then mostly just played Emma and Ramsey. He didn't really play Callie, but she was there and available, and Anya was really only there for her serve. This year they have the new Emma and everyone else back. Which is why I was super surprised when they went with the 6-2 this season and essentially didn't have much use for them. Recently, they've been using all of the littles, and they're actually doing a really good job. At least, they haven't been a liability. But even they can't get under the missles coming from the other team when there's barely any block to slow them down. That overview of setters is something else, man. Someone posted a shorter version of that on another site, and while I had known that Texas wasn't managing the position well, I didn't realize it looked that bad. Something is going wrong there and it needs to get fixed. I don't know why Elliott has managed the position like he has. Is he searching for perfection? Or does he think his hitters are athletic enough that they should be able to do well without perfect sets? It's very confusing. As I said on another board, I think that Elliott might be used to having more talent than 98% of other teams, and just being able to let his attackers take over the match. The problem is that the game has grown so much that the gap between elite pins and great pins is smaller than ever. And the gap between great pins and really good pins is even tinier. Texas can't rely on just having more talent because the talent gap with many teams is now too small. So that leaves development. And while Texas seems to have had great development in the past, I can't say I've seen much in the most recent season and a half. It's worrisome.