The Texas Longhorns volleyball team is heading to the 2022 NCAA National Championship.
The top-seeded Longhorns beat the University of San Diego three sets to one in the semifinals on Thursday at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
Texas lost the first set of its match but recovered to win the next three — including a rally from a 4-0 deficit in the final set — behind Madisen Skinner, Molly Phillips, Zoe Fleck, Saige Ka’aha’aina-Torres, and American Volleyball Coaches Association National Player of the Year Logan Eggleston.
Overall, Texas has a record six first-team All-Big 12 players on its team and has spent most of the season as the top-ranked team in the country.
Texas is now 27-1 on the season and has defeated Fairleigh Dickinson, Georgia, Marquette, Ohio State, and San Diego during this year’s tournament. The Longhorns will face Louisville, who beat Pittsburgh in the semifinals, in the championship in Omaha on Saturday night.
Pittsburgh eliminated defending champion Wisconsin in the Regional Finals on December 10.
This will be the ninth national championship appearance for the Texas volleyball team, which lost the 2020 National Championship to Kentucky and has lost its last three finals appearances. Only Stanford, Penn State, and Nebraska have more finals appearances.
The Longhorns have previously won two national championships (1988, 2012).
“It’s about handling our emotions,” Texas coach Jerritt Elliott told ESPN. “I’ve got a lot of trust in this group in terms of our routines. I’ve been really impressed with their resilience and the way they want to fight. They really want to earn this thing, and now they’ve got that chance.”
This will be the first championship appearance for Louisville, the first school from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) to appear in the final. The Cardinals made it to the semifinals last season.
Saturday’s championship will air at 7 p.m. CST on ESPN2.
