NCAA volleyball tournament final: Keys to Kentucky-Texas A&M - ESPN

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — We get it. You're tired of hearing about SEC domination. The selection committee favors them, yada yada, because «it just means more.»

But wait.… We're talking about volleyball here.

For the first time in the conference's history, two SEC teams will be battling for the volleyball national championship Sunday afternoon when No. 2 Kentucky plays sixth-ranked Texas A&M at T-Mobile Center (3:30 ET, ABC). It took the league nearly four decades to celebrate its first national championship when Craig Skinner's Kentucky Wildcats won in 2020 — actually spring 2021 because of COVID-19.

But this pairing is not a fluke. The Southeastern Conference had three teams (Kentucky, Texas and Texas A&M) ranked in the top 10 in the final regular-season poll, and a Wisconsin upset of Texas prevented the final four from being three-fourths SEC. Sunday's outcome will ensure that four teams currently in the SEC have won the national championship in the past six years (Kentucky 2020, Texas 2022 and 2023), though Texas didn't join the conference until 2024.

Skinner opened his news conference Friday by acknowledging the shift.

«Kudos to the SEC and the coaches in our league,» Skinner said, «for getting our conference in the position to be an elite league in the sport of volleyball in the NCAA.»

Skinner, an assistant when Nebraska won a national championship in 2000, knew the dearth of SEC dominance might hinder recruiting when he took the Kentucky job in 2005. So, he used the «Come join us and be the first SEC team to win a national championship» pitch.

«To be really good, you've got to invest a lot of time,» Skinner said. «I'd been a part of a national championship program. I just wanted people to feel what that was like. Not