Laurie Corbelli sizes up Aggies' mid-season improvement

Texas A&M Volleyball Coach Laurie Corbelli

Overall thoughts on the hitters' performance in the 3-0 win vs. Alabama...

"I thought it was really great. Stephanie Aiple has been in charge of delivering a set to attackers so that they can terminate. Quite often when they don't terminate, her frustration inside builds. She tries not to show it but she will see the opportunity, and if we miss that opportunity she really takes it personally and lets it get her pretty frustrated.

"To see those hitters join up and really making good decisions and changing their speeds — so, we work a lot on terminating with a big power and also work on the off-speed stuff and some selection — we are just doing a much better job. I think that encourages the setter to number one, give you more sets but also even better sets."

On importance of getting the offense going during a match...

"It feels great to have all your hitters really rolling. In the past you can kind of look over people's attack percentages and you can pretty much guess their record. Your wins correlate really highly with your attack percentage and we have Jazzmin Babers hitting number four in the nation in hitting percentage and have Sullivan in the top 20 in the nation, and also have a setter that is able to deceive and deliver the ball that she can.

"It all starts with our serve reception which, early in the season, was choppy. As that has smoothed out, all of our offense has really smoothed out, so that makes it a lot of fun."

On the improvement of the team's serve receive...

"We have worked so hard on it and it is in direct relation to how much time you spend. When you are in preseason and you are trying to get together in offense, defense, transitions and serve receive, it just wasn't there yet — and I think as other things become more acceptable we have been able to spend more time on the serve receive and it has really paid off.

"I think there are players that have really risen to the occasion in that regard from Gabby Litwin, Amy Nettles, Emily Hardesty, Amy Houser, Victoria Arenas, all of our liberos, Katelyn Labhart, all of our defensive specialists that we put in for our back row work have improved tremendously and have wonderful attitudes about it, so naturally you are going to improve."

On what the team's focus is this week...

"Well, the last week and a half to two weeks we have really had to improve our defense. We have balls hit at us right where we are in the right spots and we aren't coming up with them like coaches think we should be, so naturally we are going to the gym and beating balls at them making sure that they are not only pursuing but also finding ways to control that ball. I think it is really paying off with the time you spend and I think they are taking it a lot more, not seriously, but they are just taking it more to heart and are more understanding to how important it really is. Defense has been huge for us in these last couple of weeks."