The Aggies will face the final obstacle standing between them and the SEC title this week.
The Texas A&M Aggies (21-6, 14-2 SEC) will take to the road in one of their final games of the regular season against the Missouri Tigers (25-4, 13-3 SEC) in Columbia, Missouri, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. In their previous matchup, the Aggies swept the Tigers to extend the Aggies’ streak to seven games at the time. The Tigers are on a streak of their own, suffering their last loss from the Aggies on Nov. 4.
Since their previous matchup, Texas A&M head coach Laurie Corbelli said the team has grown.
“We just keep getting better,” Corbelli said. “Not only the volleyball part, but the team part — the confidence, the belief, the trust, and just the willingness to do the work. It’s been a real joy to be around this group and see them mature like that … [The previous Missouri match] was a lot of fun, it was pretty intense. Neither side wanted to give anything up at all.”
Against the Tigers, the Aggies had a total of 23 attack errors, four service errors, two blocking errors and two handling errors. In the early sets of the most-previous game against Florida, A&M found itself at a 2-0 deficit before bouncing back in the third set.
“It was all about our mentality,” senior outside hitter Angela Lowak said. “I remember it was the fourth set, it felt like this is Aggie volleyball, this is what we’ve been doing this whole season. It wasn’t necessarily that Florida was doing anything different, because they were continuing to attack us, but we had transformed into this team that we know best, that gave lots of confidence to everyone.”
Errors allowed the Tigers a chance to win each individual set and possibly the match, but A&M’s potential to finish out matches weighs much more heavily on its momentum in big games. Despite the previous sweep over the Tigers, each set in the matchup was won by only two points.
“We’re just going to the word we’ve been using all season — work,” middle blocker Shelby Sullivan said. “That starts in practice. We’re already thinking about beating [Missouri] on Wednesday and just taking it one match at a time. We’ve got two matches left and we’re going to workreally hard to get two wins.”
The game will be broadcasted on the SEC Network Plus.
