After a 20-year hiatus, the Allstate Southeastern Conference Volleyball Tournament is back, and No. 6 Texas A&M volleyball will be looking to make history.
A&M football coach Mike Elko’s squad is not the only program experiencing a historic run this fall. Coach Jamie Morrison and Co. are in the middle of their best campaign since 1984, finishing the regular season with a 22-3 overall record and a 14-1 mark in SEC play.
That resume earned A&M the 2-seed in the tournament, sitting only behind Kentucky — the lone team to hand A&M a conference loss.
After that slip-up, the Maroon and White responded with authority by winning its next 10 games. The 10-match winning streak also featured marquee wins over then-No. 16 Tennessee and, most memorably, a 3-2 victory over then-No. 2 Texas at Reed Arena to claim victory in the Lone Star Showdown.
Fittingly, the matches that tested Morrison’s squad the most came against Kentucky and Texas, who happen to be the two biggest obstacles standing between A&M and an SEC Tournament Championship.
1-seed Kentucky Wildcats — 22-2 overall, 15-0 SEC
Kentucky enters the tournament as the clear favorite, as coach Craig Skinner has built a powerhouse that has owned the conference for the past decade, with nine regular-season titles in the last 10 years.
This season has been no different.
Skinner’s side has not tasted defeat in over two months, building a 15-0 SEC record along the way. Eight of those fifteen wins were sweeps.
Kentucky’s 3-1 victory over A&M was far closer than the scoreboard suggested. The Aggies started the match on fire, taking the first set 25-21 and handing the Wildcats their first dropped set in four matches. Set 2 was a heavyweight battle that Kentucky narrowly stole, 25-22, to even the match. The Wildcats then flexed their championship pedigree in the third set after they grabbed the lead.
With their backs against the wall, Morrison’s squad refused to quit. A&M pushed Kentucky to the brink in extra points, but the Wildcats escaped with a 27-25 finish to secure the match and take sole ownership of first place in the conference.
3-seed Texas Longhorns — 21-2, 13-2 SEC
Another national powerhouse, 3-seed Texas, enters the SEC Tournament built to challenge both A&M and Kentucky.
The Longhorns opened the season looking like the best team in the country, ripping off 18 straight wins. During that run, Texas took down eight ranked opponents and collected five wins over top-10 teams.
Then, the Aggies came along and snapped their archrivals’ streak on Halloween. The Horns struggled to regroup after the heartbreak loss and were narrowly swept by the Wildcats in their very next match.
Texas has bounced back since then, closing the regular season with three straight wins while preparing to rediscover its early-season form for the conference tournament.
A&M’s championship path
As a top-4 seed, the Aggies earned a bye through the first two rounds and will wait until the third round to face their first opponent on Sunday, Nov. 23.
The three possible matchups for A&M include 15-seed Vanderbilt, 10-seed Mississippi State and 7-seed No. 7 Georgia, which will play the winner of the match between the Commodores and Bulldogs in the opening round. A&M swept all three during the regular season.
With 3-seed Texas on the same side of the bracket as A&M, a Lone Star Showdown rematch — with a trip to the title match on the line — becomes a realistic scenario.
On the opposite side, 1-seed Kentucky and 4-seed Tennessee are expected to meet in the semifinals, barring any upsets from teams in the first two rounds. The Wildcats defeated the Volunteers 3-1 in the regular season and enter the tournament as a heavy favorite to reach the championship.
If that bracket holds, it would set the stage perfectly for Morrison’s squad to make a revenge run against Kentucky on the biggest stage of the season.
A&M will open play on Sunday, Nov. 23, with the quarterfinals onward being televised on the SEC Network.
