5 takeaways from Wisconsin volleyball's loss to No. 5 Texas

A handful of thoughts from a rough Badgers loss that could have gone a different way during the first couple sets.

MADISON, Wis. — Kelly Sheffield kept it positive to start his postmatch press conference after his University of Wisconsin volleyball program fell to a top-5 foe.

No. 8 Wisconsin (1-1) nearly took the first set against No. 5 Texas (2-0) with two set points but couldn’t close the deal. The Longhorns then started to pull away each set thereafter, eventually sweeping the Badgers 3-0 inside the Kohl Center on Sunday during the Opening Spike Classic.

“Typically when you get more kills and more digs and more aces than your opponent, you're typically not getting swept,” Sheffield said. “The thing I was telling the team is that's a match that's really going to do us a lot of good.

“And those are the things that you're looking for, that I'm looking for in the nonconference (schedule) is I want to see what we have and what we've got to get better at.”

Wisconsin, in fact, held advantages over Texas in kills (45 to 44), digs (55 to 50) and aces (2 to 1), but that wasn’t enough.

“A couple things that we talked about going into the match is we needed to be better than them in end game situations,” Sheffield said. “And I think they were certainly better at when they got in the red zone than what we were in those those first couple sets.

“We had some service errors in the first set that really hit us, and then just way too many overpasses. … I thought defensively they were awfully good in the back courts. Their littles back there were just making some unbelievable digs on some really great shots, and they were able to win some of those rallies.”

Here are a few other takeaways from Wisconsin’s first loss of the 2025 season.