Skinner, O’Neal spark Texas past Wisconsin and into national title match
NCAA Women
Lee Feinswog
December 14, 2023
Madisen Skinner of Texas fires a shot down the line past Wisconsin’s Anna Smrek/@AndyWenstrand
TAMPA — Madisen Skinner hit and served Wisconsin out of Amalie Arena and Texas into the national title match.
The junior outside hitter was spectacular Thursday on the biggest stage, the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship national semifinals. She not only had 18 kills, but six aces as part of two remarkable runs in a 25-22, 20-25, 25-13, 25-16 victory.
It vaulted the seventh-seeded defending national champions into a 3 p.m. Eastern Sunday final against top-seeded Nebraska. The Huskers swept Pittsburgh in the earlier semifinal.
What’s more, the two matches were played before a crowd of 19,598, the largest ever for an indoor NCAA volleyball match.
Big 12-champion Texas improved to 27-4 with its ninth win in a row.
Third-seeded Wisconsin, which finished second to Nebraska in the Big Ten, saw its season end 30-4.
Skinner, who won an NCAA title as a freshman at Kentucky and then another last year with Texas, had those 18 kills, hit .227, and had an assist, nine digs and a season-high six of the 11 Texas aces. Skinner’s previous best was three aces in a match, although she led the Longhorns with 38 entering the match.
“We had scouted pretty well, and we knew their weaknesses and individual players and who we wanted to serve,” Skinner said. “Just working at depths and putting up the pace on the ball and trusting myself and trusting my serve, and Jerritt called for me, and that was that. Yeah, I kept trusting myself and went with it, and it was great.”
Asjia O’Neal had 11 kills in 16 errorless attacks to hit .688 and had two aces, two digs and four blocks. Jenna Wenaas had 10 kills but hit .091 and had five digs and a block.
Molly Phillips. who after Sunday’s match is transferring as a graduate student to play beach at USC, had 10 kills, hit .333 and had a dig and three blocks.
Setter Ella Swindle had four kills in eight errorless tries, 46 assists, an ace, five digs and two blocks. Her team hit .274. Emma Halter had 19 digs, seven assists and two aces.
“Obviously they’re big and they’re going to put up a good block, but we knew we just needed to trust ourselves,” O’Neal said. “We’re also, I think, are a pretty big team, pretty dynamic, so we didn’t want to let their size on the other side affect what we were doing. We just stuck with what’s worked so far.”
Ella did a good job moving us around, so we had a lot of a good one-on-one opportunities where there was a lot of seams. So credit to Ella for getting us good positions.
The Badgers, who had won seven in a row, hit .223. Sarah Franklin, the Big Ten player of the year, led with 13 kills, hit .163, and had seven digs and two blocks. Anna Smrek had 13 kills with one error in 22 attacks to hit .522 and had four blocks. Temi Thomas-Ailara had nine kills and a dig and Devyn Carter had four kills but hit .071 to go with a dig and four blocks.
The middles were ineffective. Carter Booth had two kills but three errors in 10 swings and two blocks. CC Crawford had one kill in five errorless attacks, an ace and seven blocks.
Setters MJ Hammil and Izzy Ashburn combined for 31 assists, an ace and 15 digs. Gulce Guctekin had 13 kills, three assists and an ace, and Julia Orzol had seven digs and four assists.
“Texas played a great match. Congratulations to them. I thought they came out in the first set, probably a little bit steadier than what we were. We made probably a few more errors than what we typically do in the first set,” said Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield, whose Badgers won the 2021 NCAA title.
“I thought we started settling down a little bit toward the end of that. The second set, we started playing a little bit more Wisconsin volleyball. When they came out of the locker room, I thought their serving kind of turned the tide. I thought they were very courageous behind the service line and really putting a lot, a lot of pressure on our patterns, service patterns. Skinner, I mean, her serving — I don’t know how many service aces she ended up having, but our passers were having to battle. They were having to battle hard for some of those.
“Start of the first set, I thought Wenaas played really well and gave them a big lift in the first set. Then third and fourth set, it was O’Neal and Skinner attacking. Their young kids played well. Very good effort out of Swindle. We gave it our best shot, but I told these guys all year, somebody’s going to knock us out. It’s going to take a great effort. And Texas certainly gave us that tonight.”
In the first set, Texas let Wisconsin off the hook after building a 17-12 lead. The Badgers clawed back into it and forced the first tie at 20-20. Texas went up 22-21 on O’Neal’s first kill and then Swindle made it 23-21 with a nifty dump.
A kill by Franklin pulled Wisconsin to 23-22, but a Skinner blast a block by O’Neal to end a long rally gave the Longhorns the set.
Texas hit .300 in the first set, while Wisconsin hit .200. Both teams had two blocks.
Wisconsin almost returned the favor in the second set. That Badgers built a 15-9 lead, but Texas would not go away.
Texas closed the gap to two, the last at 20-18, but Robinson got a kill and then Smrek and Crawford stuffed Wenaas before Thomas-Ailara got a kill to make it 23-18.
In the third set, Texas seemingly toyed with the Badgers as Skinner went on an incredible 9-0 serving run in which she had three aces. Texas led 5-3 when it sided out on a Franklin hitting errors. Skinner then served the Badgers into oblivion in a run that not only included those aces. but a kill from the back-row.
The lead ballooned to 17-4. Wisconsin got to 13 points before Skinner closed out the set on a tremendous swing from the back row.
Skinner struck again in the third set. Texas led 5-4 when its sided out on an O’Neal kill and Skinner followed with an ace, O’Neal had a block, and Skinner had another ace. She had another ace in the run the boosted the lead to 11-4. O’Neal piled on with two aces of her own after Texas sided out.
