Texas tops Louisville to win NCAA women's volleyball title

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The Longhorns won the women's volleyball national title on Saturday, ending a decade-long quest for a third title.

The Longhorns were too much for the Cards, winning three times. The Texas team was powered by the AVCA national player of the year, who had 19 kills and seven digs.

The Texas Longhorns were the top-ranked team in the preseason but only played one week in the top spot. The Longhorns regained the top spot the next week after losing to Iowa State.

The Longhorns' season was very close. In 1988 and 2012 the program won the title. Both of those were sweeps over the state.

The Longhorns have faced disappointment before at the health center where they won Saturday. They lost the national championship match to Nebraska here in 2015 and to Kentucky in the spring of 2021.

The SEC's first volleyball title was brought by Kentucky, and Louisville was trying to do the same for the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Pittsburgh team was defeated by the Louisville team in the national semifinals on Thursday.

In six seasons at Louisville, coach Dani Busboom Kelly, who won volleyball titles as a player in 2006 and as an assistant in 2015, has risen to become one of the nation's top volleyball coaches. She was trying to become the first woman to win an NCAA volleyball title as a head coach and also give Louisville its first national championship in a sport other than basketball.

The Longhorns have appeared in 14 NCAA final fours and eight NCAA final. They didn't participate in the first NCAA tournament in 1981 because they didn't want to compete in the final two tournaments of the year.

Mick Haley was Texas' coach from 1980 to 1996 and led the Longhorns to their 1988 NCAA title. Jim Moore was the Longhorns' head coach. After Texas had its first losing season in 2000, Moore was replaced by JerrittElliott, who was the interim head coach for USC.

The Longhorns haven't made the NCAA tournament every year but they have won at least 23 matches in at least 20 of the 22 seasons they've had. The state of Texas finished with a 28-1 record. The 2012 championship team went 29-4 and the program had multiple chances to add another trophy.

Texas has been a force. The growth of the sport has made it harder to get to the final four. Texas swept Fairleigh Dickinson and Georgia in the first two rounds and then beat Ohio State and Marquette in the regionals. The Longhorns defeated San Diego in the national semifinals.

The sport has come a long way in terms of its physical abilities. He referred to his first final four on the women's side when he was a coach.

Two outside hitters were hitting 9 feet, 10 inches and 9-11. If you're not at 10-4, you're small. The game has changed and the coaching has evolved. There's a lot of research going on. There's a lot of data. The game can be studied and managed by people. There's a lot more information now than there was in the past.