Jamie Morrison 'can't wait' to 'show off' his 2024 Texas A&M squad

Texas A&M volleyball held a Maroon & White Game on Saturday, and their regular season is slated to get underway on Aug. 30 against South Alabama in Mobile. On Tuesday morning, head coach Jamie Morrison joined TexAgs Radio to discuss the anticipation ahead of 2024.

Key notes from Jamie Morrison interview

• The weekend was great. We got to play a little volleyball and give the girls a couple of days off. That doesn't happen very often. We want to keep them fresh this year and give them some mental breaks this year with some more days off. I was really fired up that we were playing a scrimmage and had nearly 1,000 people show up. The 12th Man really showed up, and I am extremely grateful for those people.
   
• In the first set, we threw our uniforms on and had some jitters. I thought we got those out in the second set, and it was five sets of unbelievable volleyball. I told our girls I can't wait to show them off next week.
   
• Right now, one of the biggest compliments that we talk a lot about is alignment. You show up as the person you say you are going to show up as. I think I've got that across the board here from the administration, the people I've hired and the players we've brought in. I've stayed true to what I said I was gonna do.
   
• I talk to people in the volleyball community, and people laugh and say patience is not my virtue. When I have my ideas set on something, I push and go out to do it. When I was hired, I said that the national team gave me that extra motor. In terms of scouting, most people prepare for one, maybe two teams a week. With the national team, you are preparing for one team a night for five nights in a row. It creates this motor in you that you have to go. I understand that it takes time and that pieces of it will take time, but there are pieces that can happen now, and that's what we have done. We found the changes we can make in years one and two to make the biggest differences.
   
• I think the one thing that I learned and try to use is whenever I have a team, I create a movie in my head of what that team is capable of being. I think about how they can play volleyball and interact with each other. Then I think about one thing that I can change to get to that. Every team has a unique set of personalities but also the ability to play volleyball in different ways. There will be a different movie every year. Find what that movie is and figure out what the biggest chunk I can bite off of that. That also applies to the program as a whole and what is the most important piece I need to do now. It is a combination of those two things, but unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day.
   
• We head up to Baylor on Saturday for an exhibition. We have had a nice home and away with them. The rankings came out, and they were somewhere in there. I don't believe in rankings, but they are a good volleyball team. They run fast and do some things that will test us. It's awesome to test things and play around with lineups without affecting the win-loss column.
   
• You get to see what it looks like and how it feels to respond to someone in a different color uniform. I think that is what these games are about. I obviously want to win, but it is the one time we get to test things and get some people some experience when you wouldn't normally get that during the season.
   
• I think one of the things I learned is that October is hard, and it is the time you need to save up energy and push through that. That is when teams are great; in the middle of the season teams are handling the hard work better than the others. There was that piece and staying unified. I think we have a group that likes to work together.
   
• Our roster is deep right now. When you get deep, you have some tough decisions to make, but those are positive things. Everyone is developing as a volleyball player, and that's when teams get great is when iron sharpens iron. I would love to get to the point where practice is the best and toughest volleyball we play each week.
   
• It is interesting because I went back to the years prior, and I saw Ifenna Cos-Okpalla hit a ball but the arm wasn't there. She is hitting the ball harder and becoming an elite blocker. I talked to her about not just the stats that show up in the stat column that you see, but the stat columns that we see and the ability to read is the area we are going to grow in this year.
   
• I'll say this: What other coaches have done in their second year is spurring me on. I don't think we're there yet, maybe we are, but everyone says it takes time. Patience is not my virtue, but I looked at LSU women's basketball winning a title in their second year to know it is possible. I look on campus and see what softball has done in year two of Trisha Ford’s tenure and what all these other coaches are doing. I am fired up with what is happening, and I have to keep pace.
   
• We come back and will give the girls a day off after the Baylor scrimmage. For October, I am really focused on energy and balancing the idea of pushing to get better and also saving some in the tanks so we are better off later in the year. So I will give them a day off after we play Baylor, and then we will continue getting better. We did a really good job of preparing for the season last season, and we did again this year. I tried to make sure the things we did at the beginning of the last year made us good again this year.