With No. 19 Texas A&M set to begin SEC play Friday night, its 6-5 nonconference record leaves much to be desired. But the Aggies are doing everything in their power to take what positives they saw from those losses and carry them over to conference play as they attempt to win another SEC championship.
A&M head coach Laurie Corbelli said after the Aggies’ loss to Wisconsin she has felt a sense of complacency from her team — likely stemming from last season’s success — that must improve if they want to accomplish their goals.
“We’ve had some pretty poor practices and so that part of it has concerned me for a few days,” Corbelli said. “I think it’s an attitude of ‘it will happen.’ They talk about how we need to make these changes, but they don’t make the changes.”
Even though all five of the Aggies’ losses came against opponents who were ranked higher than A&M — including Wisconsin and Texas, two teams ranked in the top 5 on the most recent Coaches Poll — it would have been nice to win at least one or two of those matches. Junior setter Stephanie Aiple said the fact that they couldn’t garner a win in any of those five matches should get the Aggies’ attention.
“It’s always good to get a win off of a ranked team, and seeing that we aren’t strikes reality with us,” Aiple said. “We aren’t doing what we need to do in practice. We aren’t doing what we need to do off the court. It’s a serious change that the team needs to make.”
One bright spot from the Aggies’ nonconference slate has been freshman outside hitter Hollann Hans, who recorded double-doubles against both Wisconsin and Texas. Hans led the team in kills in both of those contests, and said that she is looking forward to the Aggies’ SEC opener Friday night in Alabama.
The match is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. and will be broadcast nationally on SEC Network.
“I’m so excited,” Hans said. “Alabama is a great team, so it’s going to be a good match. I know that if we fix some things we are an amazing team with amazing players, so I’m very excited to start SEC.”
The Crimson Tide boast a current seven-match winning streak as well as senior middle blocker Krystal Rivers, a three-time SEC Player of the Week.
But the early losses are not the end of the world for the Aggies, who are still ranked despite their record. They are still the favorite to win the SEC and, if they do that, they will play in the NCAA tournament once again and the five nonconference losses won’t matter much.
The Aggies hope these losses will show them what they need to work on and serve as motivation for the rest of the season.
“With losing, there’s always something you can learn from that,” said junior libero Amy Nettles. “So it’s not that we appreciate losing early, but we understand that losing early isn’t horrible because we can learn so much and it opens your eyes to what we need to work on.”
