.png){kind=logo}
Did Texas Fix Its Hitting Problem?
Texas swept No. 15 USC on a season-best .309, with a setter running a 5-1 for the first time and without the sophomore its offense was drawn around. One night is not an answer.
Texas swept No. 15 USC 3-0 (25-16, 25-21, 25-20) at Gregory Gymnasium on Wednesday and hit .309 doing it, the best the Longhorns have hit all season.
Three days ago this desk asked whether Texas had a hitting problem, on a 2-2 start and a sweep by Nebraska. Wednesday is the first night that argument has had an answer, and it is more complicated than yes.
Texas is 3-2. Arizona State beat the Longhorns 3-1 on 22 August and No. 1 Nebraska swept them in Las Vegas on 30 August, and those two nights are the entire case for the question.
The lineup that produced Texas's best hitting night of the season is not the one Texas planned, and two of the players the offense was drawn around were not part of it.
Texas is in the SEC and USC is in the Big Ten, which is the only reason the two met on a Wednesday in September. Challenge Week put 34 programmes into 27 matches across ten campuses this week.
Texas Hit Its Best Number of the Season
Texas hit .309 with 42 kills against 12 errors on 97 swings, and blocked 11 times on the weighted scale. Cari Spears had 17 kills on 28 swings for .464, with eight digs, two blocks and two aces.
USC hit .135 with 32 kills against 19 errors on 96 swings and blocked eight times. The two sides swung almost exactly as often and Texas converted 10 more of them.
The crowd of 4,827 was the seventh-largest Gregory Gymnasium has held and the school calls it a sellout, which are both its own words for the same night. Texas came back from six points down in the third set.
A National Champion Setter Is on the Bench
Rella Binney ran the offense on Wednesday and it was her first time running a 5-1 in a match, on her outside hitter's account. Ella Swindle went in twice and played fewer than five points.
Swindle set for Texas last season and set the 2023 national championship team as a freshman. Jerritt Elliott, asked how he would use her this year, said it was week to week.
That is a national champion at 21 playing behind a junior who had never run this system in a match. Elliott has not framed it as a demotion and Spears has not framed it as one either.
What week to week looked like on Wednesday was 31 assists for Binney and under five points for Swindle, on the night Texas hit .309 against a team that hit .135.
Cari Spears, the Texas sophomore outside hitter, to the Daily Texan:
I mean, with (Binney) being in the front row, this her first time running a 5-1. Most of us have ran it before, but it's a different setter, so it's different how she wants to run the court. Just getting to practice that, we got a lot more comfortable, and it helped us grow so much.
Spears, in the same interview, on what the connection is now:
I think me and (Binney), our connection has grown so much. She's just putting us in a position to be great and go out there, and she gives us so much confidence.
Texas Is Also Playing Without Its Second Outside
Abby Vander Wal went down against TCU at the Players Era Volleyball Showcase on 29 August, landing badly after an attack and unable to put weight on her left leg. Elliott ruled her out for the season the next day.
She had been an SEC All-Freshman selection in 2025, and the Daily Texan reports the injury as a torn ACL. Henley Anderson, a freshman who started this year on the right side, has moved to full-rotation outside.
Spears, in the same interview, on Anderson:
She's a freshman, and so we're just learning a lot every single game and every single process. She went from starting on the right side this year, and now she's playing full rotation outside, just (shows) how adaptable she is.
One Sweep of a 1-2 Team Proves Little
So the honest answer to our own question is no, not yet. USC came in at 1-2 and hit .135, and a night against that is evidence of a lineup working rather than proof of one that lasts.
What is proved is narrower and more useful than a verdict on the hitting.
Texas's best offensive night of the season came from a setter making her first run at this system and a freshman playing out of position, while the two players the offense was drawn around sat out or sat down.
Louisville comes first and Wisconsin after it. Wisconsin needed five sets on Wednesday against a Florida team that had not lost all season, so neither is a night Texas hits .309 by default.
Louisville is next, at Bridgestone Arena on Sunday morning, and No. 6 is a different proposition from 1-2. Texas hits above .250 in that match and the question is closed. Below .200 and Wednesday was the opponent talking.
