I'm sure that there are plenty more reasons, but off the top of my head:
- Aiple retiring (good for her btw given the injury). Camille has done very well for a freshman setter, but it can be really limiting
- 1st contact S/R seems to be consistently poor. McGee and Hans are routinely put into low percentage situations against a double or even a triple block. Ideally, we would have a strong 6 rotation OH that help w/ that first contact. Hans has progressed tremendously, but I think I remember that she was a middle in HS and is really learning the position
- We are athletic, but we are not nearly at the same physical level as Kentucky, Florida, Wisconsin, Stanford, Penn State, etc. Part of the reason that we have been successful in the past is that we have solid first contact, play good defense and run a quick and unpredictable offense.
- The way that we are forced to play is much more like Texas w/ high sets to the pins and that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on your hitters. We have solid players, but solid system players vs world class athletes.
- We have not been able to consistently find our middles on anything other than a 1 or an a. Until we have better 1st contact and can run our middles off of 1 foot behind the setter (or even a B/31), we are going to continue to struggle to give them high percentage opportunities.
The good news is that I like the young players on the team. Volleyball is a really tough sport to recruit if you're close to a powerhouse like Texas. Volleyball is not a rural sport - the club culture is based in cities (Dallas, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, SF, LA, Denver, Indy, Minneapolis, etc) and that has made it tougher for us to draw kids when we're directly competitive with UT. Like it or not, Elliot has built a powerhouse; and, with recruiting the way it is, many of their kids are identified in middle school and have grown up watching UT make the NCAA tournament every year and compete for a national championship.
While the Corbellis have been around for a long time, they absolutely know what they are doing. The frustrating thing is that A&M is so much more invested in their volleyball camps than I've seen at other schools that have even more success recruiting. John is out there helping everybody and investing time on almost all of the courts. I've coached D1 camps where they can barely get a 2nd assistant to show up ... really hope we can get something positive going for the program over the next year.