The Aggies are still playing, but I won’t be seeing them in person until next month, so I’ll recap some games here.
11-21-25
The Aggie Volleyball season ended this afternoon with a 1-3 loss to WKU at the C-USA Tournament. The Aggies won the first set, 25-15. Two of other 3 sets were close. Maggie Lightheart had 16 kills, Jaelynn Kohli had 12, and Tess Fuqua and Mia Fox had 9. Makayla Martinez had 16 digs and 8 aces. Maggie and Mia were hitting over .360 and Jae was hitting an astounding .390. Given those stats, WKU obviously played really well. The Hilltoppers would win the tournament over host FIU in 5-sets.
The story of the tournament, however, happened in the previous game. Eight seed, Missouri State swept top seed, UTEP. Oh my goodness! Here poor UTEP fans, despondent over their Football team and Men’s Basketball teams, were so proud of their Volleyball team. I almost feel sorry for them. [They would get into the NCAA Tournament with WKU anyway.]
I guess I’m going to have to write some sort of summary for Aggie Volleyball this season. From the first exhibition, I was immediately struck by the lack of university transfers into the program. It also seemed like a bad sign that the Aggies weren’t going to be hosting a home tournament here this season. I was briefly hopeful the team could be competitive after splitting with the Lobos. Jae and Tess were really good additions to the team (Tess coming off of injury last year).
Right after that, reality set in with three losses at the Tulsa Invitational. The Aggies would win four in a row at the start of the conference season, but then came those two humiliating home losses to UTEP. That seemed to be the turning point. The Aggies would win some more matches in conference, but never seemed to get their confidence back. There was even an inexplicable 3-set loss to a winless in conference, LA Tech. In their final series against Kennesaw State, the Aggies played hard, but seemed like a shell of their former selves.
Some lingering injuries seemed to hobble the team a bit, but it may have mental damage that affected more players. The rotating setter drama was surely diminishing everyone’s confidence. Maggie and Tess getting pulled for serve receive issues seemed to get into their heads. Serving, which seems to be mental than physical, was great at the beginning of the season, but as soon as they hit a trough, it mostly ceased to be an asset.
I felt that the team had six players capable of scoring in double figures in any game. Not all of them in the same game, just that it would be very hard to shutout the whole team in one game. They’re just not getting the teamwork to put it together, which would include digging and setting. A former assistant coach said it before: everyone can hit and block at this level, but setter and libero are the positions that differentiate great volleyball teams from good ones.
Are this team’s issues because their players aren’t as good as the top teams’ players in the conference and they’re getting exposed? Is Coach Jordan not being hard enough on them to master certain basic skills? Is he degrading their confidence too much by taking players in and out of the lineup constantly? These are questions you don’t ask when you’re winning. The announced strategy of recruiting freshman and JC players in hopes of molding them didn’t pay off this season and feels more like an excuse for not being able to get high-quality transfers.
I’m already kind of mentally checking out on going to as many Aggie events next season as this season. I probably won’t get a Country Pass and will skip some sports. I hope the new AD, Joe Fields, can drum up more funding and donations, but I’m not really hopeful. So that said, I’m expecting more of the same next season for Volleyball. I wouldn’t be shocked if the best players on the Aggies leave. I know Tess and Maggie love playing in front of their families, but that would be the only thing possibly keeping them here. Without those two specifically, I’m not sure how much I want to show up.
Also today, the Men’s Basketball team played Samford here. I’d originally thought that they were playing on Saturday and was actually hoping to ask somebody out to the game. It was a bit overly optimistic. Oh, well. As it was a Friday night, I was instead working and listening to the game on the radio.
Samford is not that impressive an opponent, so there was only half the crowd from the Lobo game last Saturday. However, the team has Jaden Booth, the nation’s eighth leading scorer. He was held scoreless in the first half though, and it ended with the Aggies having an 8-point lead. I’m sorry I wasn’t at the game, because I missed the Wiener Dog Race at halftime.
The Aggies put in a couple of 3’s to start second half. They’d buried Samford by 21 points pretty early in the half. But with a minute and a half left, that lead was down to 9 with the Samford bench in playing. It was a 7-point lead with a minute left, but the Aggies held on and won, 81-72. Four Aggie players in were double figures with Juice Mims leading the way with 17 points and 11 rebounds. Coach Hooten also praised Anthony Wrzeszcz. He did most of the guarding of Booth and held him to 3 points. The Aggies are 4-0 going to an invitational in Mexico next week.
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