After Texas volleyball dropped its second consecutive match with Sunday’s sweep at the hands of Kentucky, head coach Jerritt Elliott had plenty of other things on his mind than the looming postseason.

“I’m worried about going home and watching film right now and getting ourselves ready for practice,” he said.  

But Elliott knows better than anyone the expectations at Texas, since he helped set the standard with three national championships in his 24 seasons leading the Longhorns. Texas (18-2, 10-2 SEC) measures success by NCAA titles rather than conference crowns. Yes, the No. 4 Longhorns’ hopes of capturing their first SEC championship are all but gone after the loss to Kentucky. But the season’s top target remains in site for a squad still ranked No. 2 in the NCAA’s RPI rankings released earlier this week.

“The ultimate goal is the last game in the season,” libero Emma Halter said, a senior who helped Texas win national championships in 2022 and 2023. “We’re going to take every game as a learning experience, (and) you don’t learn if you don’t apply. So, we’ve got to apply what we learned over these past two games.

“Any loss stinks; it doesn’t ever feel good. But we have such good culture, and we have such a good connection. I feel like we’re going to fall back on that every single time we have these hard moments.”

Why, exactly, has Texas has such hard moments over the past two matches? Last Friday’s tense 25-19, 25-23, 17-25, 19-25, 15-13 loss at Texas A&M seems understandable, considering the match took place in front of a program-record crowd of 9,801 at Reed Arena. But the 25-14, 28-26, 27-25 loss to Kentucky at Gregory Gymnasium comes with more head scratching, especially the slow start. 

Kentucky exposed the Longhorns’ defensive issues at the net by hitting .358 for the match behind Eva Hudson and Brooklyn DeLeye, who combined for 38 kills and just four hitting errors. Texas averages only 1.98 blocks a set, which is tied for 208th among all Division I teams in the NCAA.

And when teams consistently keep Texas off-balance with their attack, it prevents the Longhorns’ offense from finding a groove.

“We’ve lost our rhythm in terms of how we’re playing the game right now,” Elliott said. “And as I told the team, that falls on me as a coach. We’ve had really good play for a lot of the season, but right now, we’ve lost that a little bit. We’ve got to figure that out.”

Of course, Elliott doesn’t want to panic after two losses to top-10 teams. Texas remains one of the nation’s elite offensive squads, leading the nation with 14.97 kills a set and ranking just behind Nebraska with a .307 hitting percentage. In addition, the Longhorns have eight wins over teams currently ranked by the American Volleyball Coaches Association, which is more than any other team.

Elliott and his players said they expect to regain that form in the three games of the regular season, starting with the next match Friday at Florida.

“We’ve just got to get better at volleyball,” Halter said. “And I know this team will. We have awesome culture, awesome girls and so much talent in our gym.”