‘Completely different:’ Craig Skinner and Jamie Morrison set to make history
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- SEC produces first-ever NCAA women’s volleyball title match: Kentucky vs Texas A&M
- Craig Skinner draws on 2000 championship pedigree to build Kentucky program
- Jamie Morrison leverages Olympic, pro and institutional resources to elevate Aggies
Two days out from the NCAA Volleyball national championship match, Texas A&M’s Jamie Morrison issued an affecting truth to his players.
“Thirty-five athletes have the right to practice today,” Morrison said. “And ... each one of our athletes is one of those.”
For the first time in the history of the sport, the National title match will feature two Southeastern Conference teams. No. 3 Texas A&M, in its first-ever national championship, and No. 1 Kentucky, in pursuit of its second-ever national title, and first since 2020-21.
It’s a picture that, even 10 years ago, not many would believe. But it’s not at all surprising to the only two head coaches in America still allowed to show up to practice this weekend.
Craig Skinner had turned down a few other head coaching jobs before finally deciding to accept one in 2004 at the University of Kentucky.
Skinner had experienced national recognition within the volleyball landscape at the high school and club levels in Muncie, Ind., before successful tenures as an assistant coach for Wisconsin, Ball State (on the men’s team) and then finally at Nebraska, where he — under the legendary John Cook — won his first NCAA national championship in the year 2000.
By the end of his four seasons with the Cornhuskers, Skinner had played a role in guiding the program to an overall record of 154-11 and four-straight Big 12 championships.
When UK director of athletics Mitch Barnhart came calling to ask Skinner to lead the Wildcats, now 21 years ago, Skinner felt that it was the best choice he could make.
Ahead of Sunday’s national championship match — Kentucky’s second under Skinner and second in program history — the head coach described himself as the kind of guy who “probably operates a little bit more on feel than others.”
“And when I got here, and Mr. Barnhart picked me up at the airport, I just had a two-hour conversation with him,” Skinner said. “And felt like this is where I belonged. And it was, the people of Kentucky are who I am as a person. And I thought that was pretty easy to sell.”
But the Wildcats hadn’t recorded a winning season for half a decade, nor made the NCAA Tournament since 1993.
Kentucky had won five Southeastern Conference Tournament titles since the league championship’s inception in 1979, but the SEC was nowhere near the heavy-hitting volleyball conference that it’s become. The SEC Tournament quite literally ceased to exist following the 2005 edition.
“Material things don’t motivate me,” Skinner said. “But people and feelings do, and so Kentucky was all about that. And I can buy into hard work and effort and earning things.”
Morrison, passionate about international and Olympic-level volleyball, served as an assistant for the United States Men’s National Volleyball Team in the mid-to-late aughts before taking a job as an assitant for the U.S. Women’s National Team.
During his stints with each, he won three Olympic medals — gold in the 2008 Beijing Olympics with the men’s team, silver in the 2012 London Olympics and bronze in the 2016 Rio Olympics with the women’s team. He remains the head coach of the U.S. Women’s U19 team.
Morrison also helped establish League One Volleyball, a professional league established in 2024, and served as the league’s director of sports performance.
Dating back to 1999, beginning at his alma mater UC Santa Barbara, Morrison also made a slew of women’s collegiate assistant coaching stops, continuing to do so amid his immense success at the Olympic and professional levels — most recently at the University of Texas from 2020-21.
Like Skinner, Morrison’s first head collegiate coaching opportunity came in the form of an SEC program with some national success, but nothing like the heights they’ve eclipsed since his hiring.
Morrison was named the head coach at Texas A&M in late-2022.
“When I took this job, whenever I was telling people, they had eyebrows raised a little bit, questioning,” Morrison said.
“And it’s funny because, like, a year in, when all of the changes in college athletics started happening, and they also realized resources were really important, so then it was the first thing that happened. And the other thing that I knew was going to happen was just the conference was going to explode, and I knew it for a few reasons.”
Texas — a perennial power since former head coach Mick Haley broke a barrier (NCAA champs had hailed from California or Hawaii) by defeating Hawaii in the 1988 national championship — joined the SEC in 2024 with fellow newcomer Oklahoma.
But the most monumental shift was Skinner’s breaking through during the COVID-impacted 2020-21 NCAA national championship, during which an SEC team hoisted the trophy for the first time in history.
“I really respect what Craig did out in Kentucky,” Morrison said. “And I said at the time, I had a feeling of, I could do what I believed I could do with this program.”
Belief lies at the heart of the accomplishment of not only reaching the national championship as Texas A&M, or Kentucky, but also of an all-SEC title match. Belief is its root.
“Obviously, I knew that no SEC team had ever won a national championship,” Skinner said. “And in recruiting, it was, ‘Hey, we’re going to be the first team in the SEC to win a national championship. Come join us.’ And sometimes that’s a little … it’s not for everybody. Because to be really good, you’ve got to invest a lot of time.”
In the 20 years between Skinner’s national title as an assistant coach at Nebraska and Kentucky’s national championship, he maintained the commitment to the dream, and has not once missed the postseason during his tenure as head boss.
“I’d been a part of a national championship program,” Skinner said. “And just wanted people to feel what that was like. And not just winning it, but the work, and the time and the competitive desire it takes to get to that point. Because that’s the way life is. And so for us to do that, I think, broke down doors that, either Kentucky could do it again, or someone else in the league can do it.”
Like Skinner, Morrison’s team hasn’t missed the NCAA Tournament since his hiring, with the Aggies earning a berth in 2023 after an eighth-place finish in the SEC, and reaching the Sweet 16 in 2024 after finishing fifth in the league.
Suddenly, each coach has led their respective programs to historic success in 2025, regardless of Sunday’s outcome. And their fan bases couldn’t be happier.
For Skinner and Morrison, there’s a certain power to being somewhere that could fall in love with the “special” moments, despite the fact that there may be other programs on campus which take up significant spotlight.
The Wildcats, whose men’s basketball team stands among the most successful in the history of the sport. The Aggies, whose football team will begin its college football playoff journey Saturday in a first-round playoff matchup with Miami (Fla.).
“Kentucky is a flagship institution of the state,” Skinner said. “And there’s no pro sports, and when you do something special, they will get all in, all the time. And we’re feeling that right now.”
Despite the fact that revenue sharing, NIL and the transfer portal have rocked the traditional essence of college sports, two of the college sports’ biggest brands can — as the conference likes to say — “mean more” than just men’s basketball or football.
Morrison said that he was intentional in taking a job at a school that demonstrated a serious investment in women’s athletics, and believes that there is truly room for everybody to succeed.
“There is a balance,” Morrison said. “And I think they do an amazing job of making sure that everyone can be excellent, and giving us the resources within our sports and doing their due diligence on what that’s going to take within each sport to make sure that we can be competitive.”
Morrison’s Aggies have not yet defeated Skinner’s Wildcats, and fell most recently at home, 3-1, in College Station on Oct. 8. Texas A&M, the two-seed in the league tournament, failed to reach the SEC championship match, where the Aggies would’ve had the opportunity to get its revenge.
The return of the SEC Tournament this season just so happened to coincide with the first-ever All-SEC national championship, but its high-powered talent and competitiveness on display earned viewership that would’ve been unthinkable when Skinner first took the Kentucky job, and is more than anything a testament to the elevated floor of Southeastern Conference volleyball.
“The SEC is known for putting on championships,” Skinner said. “And we’re the only sport in the league that didn’t have a championship. And so, there’s a lot of different minds and thoughts going into it, and culminating in what I thought was a spectacle for volleyball. And the league did a tremendous job of putting a spotlight on our athletes.”
In the 2025 SEC Tournament, the Wildcats drew national attention for pulling off a reverse sweep against the Texas Longhorns, who had defeated the Aggies, 3-1, in the semifinals.
Is there room for comparison in the experiences between the resurrected SEC Tournament, and a deep NCAA Tournament run? Outside of the physical and mental energy and effort, Skinner said, or the long haul of difficult competition in quick succession in hopes of a title, only time will tell.
“They had to play tough matches,” Skinner said. “We had to play tough matches. And the more you experience, the more types of matches and feelings you have, the more things you can pull from. So Sunday’s match is going to be completely different in terms of what we feel, but hopefully, at some point during this season, we have been there before, and we can draw from those situations.”
Kentucky and Texas A&M will play for the 2025 national championship Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 8:42 PM.
