Morrison & Co. looks to rebound at Reed against Alabama and Auburn

Texas A&M volleyball head coach Jamie Morrison joined Tuesday's edition of TexAgs Radio to discuss Sunday's loss at No. 12 Tennessee and what it will take for the Ags to snap their three-game skid when they host Alabama and Auburn this weekend at Reed Arena.

Key notes from Jamie Morrison interview

• Seasons have their ups and downs. In volleyball, you play 30 matches, and it's not a sport you expect to go undefeated. In this stretch, we had two of our tougher opponents in Florida and Tennessee. The film reinforced some things Tennessee is really good at that we need to fix. I'm frustrated, and our group is frustrated. Even when we weren't playing our best, we were still within a point or two in most of those sets.
   
• You learn from it, and then you flip the page and move on. Don't let the pieces that caused the loss become habits. We have to upgrade. Move on to the next one and make sure you're grinding out the wins that we need down the stretch here.
   
• Coaching is hard. It's one of the hardest shifts going from an assistant to a head coach because the only feedback you get is a W or an L. If you ride the emotions of that, you're in for a rough ride. I try to operate under the fundamentals I thought would be best. If you're looking at a three-match losing streak and thinking you're horrible, you'll get yourself in a spiral that will be tough to get out of.
   
• This is the first time we've had a three-game skid, but even after a singular loss, you have to take it and learn from it. Every single loss we've had before has been built toward something positive. We have to learn from the things that got us into this. We need to be able to fight even when we're not playing our best. We need to be two points better than our opponent, and that's the lesson I hope we take from this and apply against Alabama.
   
• What was encouraging to me is we turned it on in the third set, but when you're playing a good volleyball team, you have to grind from the beginning. You can't get into an 0-2 hole. Our sport is very interesting in that you get a reset after each set. Each set resets to 0-0.
   
• If you rewind to six months ago when we were sitting down, I wouldn't have expected our early success and the expectations got upgraded because we were playing good volleyball. We need to get back to those fundamentals.
   
• This weekend is another opportunity to play in front of the 12th Man against two good opponents. Alabama has been struggling this year, but they're physical. Auburn is a good team that has had a good season. These are two matches that we absolutely need to win.