By now, almost everything that can be said about the NCAA women’s volleyball final has been said. The serve zones have been diagrammed. The rotations studied. Every star has been labeled and ranked and debated into exhaustion. What Sunday in Kansas City does is ask two teams that have spent the whole season proving themselves to do it again, once more, as if none of it counted yet.

It is No. 1 Kentucky vs. No. 3 Texas A&M, the first all-SEC championship match in Division I women’s volleyball history. Kentucky has been here before, winning the 2020 national title. Texas A&M has not. 

2025 NCAA women’s volleyball championship

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The Aggies bulldozed their way into the program’s first championship match by knocking out top overall seed Nebraska in five sets and then sweeping Pitt, another No. 1 seed, in the national semifinal. They arrive with a first-time finalist’s resume and are led by Jamie Morrison, who was just named the national coach of the year.

They’re also the harder team to know. You think you’ve seen their ceiling, and then they elevate. When the Aggies are in system, they can bury you before you’ve adjusted. When they’re not, they don’t panic. Texas A&M standout Logan Lednicky called the Aggies “the grittiest,” and they’ve played like it, especially during the late-set messiness that usually eats upstart teams. Clean volleyball doesn’t really exist in a title match, anyway.

Kentucky comes in with the steadier resume and scar tissue. The Wildcats survived Wisconsin in five sets in the semis. Kentucky’s Craig Skinner and Wisconsin’s Kelly Sheffield coached junior varsity volleyball together in Muncie, Ind., in 1990 and went undefeated. That history is part of how you get here. So is what happened Thursday, when Skinner’s team ended Sheffield’s season.

Here’s the boring truth of a championship: It usually comes down to first contact. If serve receive holds, the setter has options and the block can be manipulated. If serve receive cracks, the whole thing turns into emergency swings.

Notably, Kentucky beat Texas A&M 3-1 when they met during the regular season in early October. That matters as evidence that Kentucky can solve this puzzle. It does not matter as a prediction. Finals are their own species.

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Good morning, BBN! It’s game day!

The Kentucky Wildcats compete for a volleyball national championship this afternoon against Texas A&M. It’s Kentucky’s second appearance in the NCAA Volleyball National Championship and Texas A&M’s first appearance. It’s also the first time two SEC teams have competed for the national championship.

It’s been a fantastic postseason run for the Wildcats, going back to that thrilling win over Texas in the SEC Championship and all the way to that come-from-behind win over Wisconsin in the semifinals. Now, the Cats have a chance to top it off with a national championship.

Game time is set for 3:30 PM ET on ABC.

This will serve as today’s open thread, so make sure to come back here to talk about the game!

The SEC is stepping up its volleyball game.

She’s been a key piece for this team.

JQ wasted no time making his presence known.

Big performances from Quaintance and Lowe.

He certainly looks like a difference-maker moving forward.

Will Stein’s offense looked good last night.

Texas Tech vs Oregon is the most interesting to me. How about you?

Could you imagine how different things look?

Not a great Year 1 for Schottenheimer.

That’s a game Duke will wish they could have back.