With Texas A&M up 24-20 in the third set of the NCAA women\u2019s volleyball title match, Maddie Waak set the ball for Ifenna Cos-Okpalla. Though Logan Lednicky and Kyndal Stowers had played bigger games for the Aggies, it was Cos-Okpalla who got the call for the championship point.<\/p>\n
She elevated and slammed the ball in between Kentucky\u2019s defenders at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. With that kill, Texas A&M won an improbable national title, 3-0 (26-24, 25-15, 25-20).<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey\u2019re putting on t-shirts behind me. I can\u2019t believe it. I\u2019m still a little bit in disbelief,\u201d Aggies coach Jamie Morrison said to ABC after the game. \u201cWe sent a warning shot out to the world about what we\u2019re about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kentucky, the No. 1 seed, started out strong in the first set. They built a lead as big as six points before Texas A&M started chipping away, eventually winning the set, 26-24. With that momentum, the Aggies owned the next two sets. Lednicky was the star of the match with 7 kills, 11 digs and 2 blocks. With every point won, Texas A&M\u2019s confidence grew.<\/p>\n
Kentucky was the third No. 1 seed that Texas A&M \u2014 a third seed \u2014 beat on the way to the national title, and every win from the Sweet 16 on was shocking. First, the Aggies came back from 2-0 to pull the reverse sweep against Louisville. Next, Texas A&M had to face undefeated, No. 1 overall seed Nebraska in Lincoln. In what was the best game of the tournament, the Aggies beat Nebraska in five sets.<\/p>\n
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But their magic didn\u2019t stop once the Aggies got to Kansas City. In the national semifinal, they swept No. 1 seed Pittsburgh, the first time the Panthers had been swept all season. And then in the first-ever All-SEC final, the Aggies came out victorious.<\/p>\n
Unlike Kentucky, which won the national title in 2020 and has been one of the top teams in women\u2019s volleyball for years, Texas A&M is a newcomer to volleyball\u2019s elite. Though it had some good teams over the years that made it to the Elite Eight, this was the program’s first Final Four and their first national title.<\/p>\n
Morrison took over the program in 2023, and held onto Lednicky and Cos-Okpalla. The Aggies turned the program around quickly, earning a bid to the tournament in 2023 and then making it to the Sweet 16 in 2024. This year, the Aggies went 29-4 and looked like a team on the brink. But with so many seniors, they had no time to waste and adopted the mentality of \u201cWhy not us?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lednicky, who played with the U.S. national team over the summer, was the heart of this team\u2019s championship run, and the player who kept asking \u201cWhy not us?\u201d Stowers\u2019 comeback might be one of the best sports stories of the year. While playing for Baylor, she suffered concussions and medically retired from the sport. But after being medically cleared and deciding she had more to give to the sport, Stowers signed with Texas A&M and is now a national champion.<\/p>\n
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Morrison has built a program that is not only a national champion, but is in a great position to continue to grow volleyball in Texas. While he will lose seniors like Lednicky and Waak, he can now show off a championship ring while on the recruiting trail.<\/p>\n
But figuring out who will play for the Aggies next season is tomorrow\u2019s problem. Today, Texas A&M gets to celebrate how it defied the odds to win the school\u2019s first-ever national title in women\u2019s volleyball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Texas A&M up 24-20 in the third set of the NCAA women\u2019s volleyball title match, Maddie Waak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9551,37864,2917,44694,41720,44696,1771,44695,27,3042,29,28,5670],"class_list":["post-96715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-aggies","tag-jamie-morrison","tag-kentucky","tag-kyndal-stowers","tag-logan-lednicky","tag-national-champions","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-women39s-volleyball","tag-texas","tag-texas-am","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-volleyball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}