Morrison & Co. face tough road stretch starting with No. 24 Auburn

A journey through the heart of the South is on deck for Texas A&M volleyball.

The Aggies are hitting the road for a three-game trip — their first in conference play this season — as they take on No. 24 Auburn on Sunday.

Last weekend, A&M fell to Texas, 3-1, and reverse swept Missouri, 3-2, to open Southeastern Conference play 1-1.

Head coach Jamie Morrison stressed that the SEC is a tough battle, where there are simply no easy outs anywhere.

“It’s gonna be a grind,” Morrison said on Tuesday. “I don’t know if I can point to a team and say, ‘They’re gonna win the SEC.’”

Now with a 10-2 overall record, the Aggies are currently one of five SEC squads with double-digit wins.

They’ll be playing two of those five teams on the upcoming trip with Auburn and Ole Miss.

“I think if you look around the league right now, it’s gonna be absolute bedlam,” Morrison said. “You have teams that were at the bottom of the table last year that are all of a sudden taking the teams at the top to five (sets).”

One thing that A&M has done to propel itself forward is stuff the stat sheet.

The Aggies currently rank top five in the SEC in hitting percentage, assists, kills, opponent hitting percentage and blocks.

Auburn, a 12-1 squad overall, is 2-0 in league play.

Their only blemish of the season was a 3-0 loss at Minnesota.

The Tigers have been a force to be reckoned with. They had only one win that went to five sets and are a dominant 8-0 at home — with four of those being sweeps.

“They’ve had a really good season,” Morrison said. “They can run a pretty quick offense. There’ll be some challenges within there that we’ll probably start getting ready for on Thursday, Friday.”

The Aggies will be away from Reed Arena for quite a while.

The team will be making stops in Auburn, Oxford and Baton Rouge on this trip before returning home on Oct.18 to host No. 18 Florida.