Morrison emphasizes the importance of A&M's 'business-like' approach

Texas A&M volleyball hits the road again this week to face Ole Miss on Wednesday and LSU on Sunday. During Tuesday's edition of TexAgs Live, head coach Jamie Morrison spoke about the Aggies upsetting Auburn last week and what remains ahead for the Maroon & White.

Key notes from Jamie Morrison interview

• We are playing great. The SEC is a grind. There are teams that are ranked and teams that aren't, but every team can beat each other on any night.
   
• We are heading off to play Ole Miss this week. They beat Tennessee last week. Tennessee was ranked, and now they are not. The SEC is a battleground. It is proving to be correct. Every coach I talk to agrees that you must be on every night.
   
• The win over Auburn was a great win. I am not going to call it an upset. I thought it was a battle between two really good teams.
   
• RPI futures are released that try to predict what the RPI will look like at the end of the year. Right now, the SEC could get ten teams in the NCAA Tournament. There is a lot of good going on.
   
• We are playing good volleyball. To play great volleyball, you must prolong the stretches of good volleyball. The match against Auburn was good volleyball for very long periods. It is really hard to play against when that happens. We are starting to be able to do that for longer stretches.
   
• Everyone just looks at sports as execution. At some point, every team can execute, and everyone can play good volleyball. It is about getting to 20-20, looking across the net and trusting what I have in my tank to be able to push harder than you. That is where teams separate at that moment. It is either the mental skills that they have trained, or they have been pushed harder physically. That is where it matters.
   
• I am not a fan of rankings. I like the computer generated ones more than the opinion ones. If we keep taking care of business, those things will take care of themselves. We will get some recognition there, but that is not why we are not doing this. We are doing this to win.
   
• Logan Lednicky got SEC Offensive Player of the Week, but the thing I gave her the most props for was the 18 digs. She has the ability to develop as an all-around volleyball player and influence what happens on the court. There is a lot of stuff that shows up in the box score, and there is a lot of stuff that doesn't that ultimately influences the way we win. She is doing a lot of those things really well. The passing of her free ball, defensive plays and serving. In the areas that don't necessarily show up, she is starting to up her games in those areas as well.
   
• There is an iron sharpening effect. That is everybody. Lednicky is getting the accolades for it, but there are another five people on the court and seven that aren't on the court that are pushing everybody in practice every day.
   
• The schedule is a grind. Before Auburn, it was our first road SEC game. We fly the day before. I talked in my presser about how grateful I am for the resources this university gives us. We get off the plane and go straight to practice. We get out of practice and go straight to dinner and then to the hotel.
   
• For Auburn, we got up at 10 a.m. and watched a little bit of video. Then, we went to the gym at 11 a.m. to play at 2 p.m. We got on the plane afterward to head home. It is a military operation. We are dropping in to take care of business, and then we head back.
   
• I am looking forward to seeing how our team responds to this three-game stretch. We got home around 8 p.m. on Sunday. The girls got to sleep in because of fall break. We practiced around 2 p.m. yesterday. We do it all over again today.
   
• I'll probably go home and hang out with my daughter for a little bit when I am done here. Then, we will watch a little bit of video again and hop on another plane to head to Ole Miss. We play tomorrow night, so it will be a little bit of a longer day tomorrow. We will get on the plane and come home afterward.
   
• Thursday, we will have a day off.  We will practice Friday and then leave again on Saturday to play LSU on Sunday. Then, we head back, and that is the end of this stretch. I really like how we have responded so far.
   
• I try to practice gratitude every day. It is the gateway to happiness. We talk a lot about what happens in our heads. We are hard-wired to look for danger and negative in the world. It is a survival mechanism. We live in a pretty nice environment. We have charter flights. If we continue to look for those negative things, we will be anxious and sad. We can hard-wire these things a little bit differently. We can choose to look for the positives and things to be grateful for.
   
• It is crazy the amount of travel that is happening in the Big Ten. Everyone looks at it from a football lens. We have 10 road trips a year. But if you are in baseball or tennis, you are constantly bouncing around the country. I saw a statistic where someone was traveling 30,000 miles this year. People are getting home at 6 a.m. That is not good for our student-athletes. That needs to be taken into account. I am grateful that the SEC is regional. We are lucky that our longest flight is about three hours.
   
• We have to stay business-like. I looked around and everyone was wearing all-black. It was perfect. We were like ninjas coming in to take care of business and then sneak out. We have to have that mentality right now. We need to be efficient in our preparation, execution and recovery. We need to have that on repeat for the next six days.