Molly Phillips with the trophy in the middle of the Texas national-title celebration/Matt Smith photo
There’s no hiding Molly Phillips. After all, she is 6-foot-4.
But throughout her career, she’s always been the Texas volleyball X factor, the player who maybe you simply didn’t notice as much over the past four years, the silent assassion who has played alongside the likes of All-Americans Logan Eggleston and Brionne Butler and Skylar Fields and Asjia O’Neal.
“She doesn’t get enough credit,” O’Neal said. “She carries that well and still works extremely hard and doesn’t let it get to her. I think she deserves way more flowers than she gets. I love having her as a teammate.”
That’s not lost on coach Jerritt Elliott.
“I think there are players on each team that aren’t heavily scouted or undervalued in the opponents’ scouting report at times, and Molly’s one of those players that if you don’t pay attention to her, she can really hurt you,” Elliott said.
“And she’s been that way for a long time.”
The numbers prove it. As Texas went 28-1 last season and 15-1 in the Big 12, en route to winning the NCAA championship, there was the aforementioned Eggleston, the VolleyballMag.com two-time national player of the year (407 kills, 4.28/set); Kentucky transfer Madisen Skinner (344 kills, 3.66); and O’Neal, who spent her spring and summer with the USA national team in Volleyball Nations League (208 kills, 2.21/set).
And then there was Phillips, who had 200 kills (2.25/set) and second only to O’Neal with a .381 hitting percentage. Phillips was also fourth in blocks with 63. She has an uncanny knack for coming up with key kills at big times and hits a cross-court angle that is vicious.
“She’s the total package,” Elliott said. “She’s got a great work ethic, she’s a great teammate, and she loves being in school, which is even better.”
Had COVID not provided an extra year, she’d be done, “which I’m glad I’m not,” Phillips said with a laugh, “because that is a frightening, frightening thought.”
Texas, ranked No. 1 in the AVCA preseason poll, will rely heavily once again on Phillips, the product of Mansfield, Texas (about 30 miles southwest of Dallas), where she played club volleyball for Texas Image with TCU stellar outside Audrey Nalls and Kentucky middle Azhani Tealer.
“Molly’s one of those people you can rely on for anything,” O’Neal said. “She’s extremely selfless and really caring and especially as a high-level athlete who has accomplished as much as she has — I think that says a lot.
Molly Phillips and Asjia O’Neal are together for one more year/Matt Smith photo
“There are so many varying personalities when it comes to athletics. So for her to be that down-to-earth, really caring person who would do anything for anyone else is a blessing to have as a friend. And she’s one of those people I know I’ll be friends with my whole entire life. And I have next year to play with her and it’s going to be really fun.”
As you would expect from the tallest girl in the class, Phillips played basketball.
“But we moved to Mansfield and all my friends played volleyball and I wanted spend more time with my friends,” she said. “I went to a volleyball practice. My dad took me, and he said, ‘You know, you’re kind of good at this thing. You might play that, too.’ ”
She got good in a hurry and by the time she was a freshman in high school, basketball was a thing of the past.
“The recruiting process picked up pretty fast and furious and I didn’t even know what high school was yet,” Phillips recalled. “I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go to college and hadn’t even gone to a high school class. It was weird. I’m glad they changed the (NCAA recruiting) rules.”
She knew about Texas, having visited the campus to watch a cousin who played football for the Longhorns. Her parents both went to Abilene Christian in Texas, so, unlike many Texans, didn’t have burnt orange in her veins. But after also considering Nebraska, Minnesota and TCU, she chose Texas.
“I always had big goals but I didn’t know where that would take me,” Phillips said.
Phillips, a VolleyballMag.com fourth-team All-American last season, came in with Skylar Fields, who became Texas great before transferring to USC.
“We recruited her as a middle,” Elliott said. “And we were short-handed on the right side, so we gave her some looks at the right side. She was always that player who wasn’t the most explosive or dynamic or biggest in the gym, but she had a very high volleyball IQ.
“And she was always willing to put in the work to clean up her game. We put her over there and it something that was really unique and special.”
Perhaps, but Phillips thought she’d get redshirted her first year. An early injury to All-American middle Brionne Butler created a need and Phillips was on the floor.
“I got thrown in there. That was pretty fun and really exciting,” Phillips recalled. “It was a whirlwind. When Bri came back I worked on being a blocking sub.”
That year, 2019, Texas went 23-4, 15-1, getting upset at home by Louisville in the NCAA’s second round. Phillips was a non-factor.
The next season, the spring 2021 COVID season, Texas finished 27-2, 16-0, and lost in the NCAA title match to Kentucky, which included Skinner, then a freshman, and Tealer. Phillips had a familiar Phillips stat line: eight kills with two errors in 18 attacks (.333), as assist, three blocks and two digs.
In 2021, Texas (27-2, 15-1) lost in the regional final to Nebraska. Phillips grinded with one kill and one error in 13 attacks to go with a match-high six blocks and a dig.
Which brought the Longhorns to 2022. Fields left for the West Coast, but Skinner transferred to Texas. So did UCLA libero Zoe Fleck and Cal middle Bella Bellmark and DS Keonilei, who had seven aces against Texas in that match the previous season against Nebraska.
It went seamlessly.
“This was the most fun I’ve ever had with a team,” Phillips said. “We all just loved coming in the gym and being with each other and we hung out so much outside of volleyball. I think that helped. We really loved being around each other and that’s hard to do with 18 girls for a whole entire season — it can literally be impossible — and we did it. We really had no drama and no issues. Everyone was just so fun to be around.”
It didn’t have to be that way, not with big-time transfers like Skinner and Fleck.
“I spoke on senior night to our team and the parents were there and I said something along the lines of we had so many transfers and it’s so easy for transfers to come in and be like, ‘I only have one year, I’m just going to do it they way I’ve always done it,’ and nobody did that,” Phillips said. “Everybody came in and adapted to our culture and bought into what we were doing. And I think that speaks volumes, because it’s hard to do, to come in and totally change what you’ve done for four years. But that’s what they did.”
And what Texas did was go 28-1, 15-1 in the Big 12, the lone loss coming in five at Iowa State on October 19, a stunning result for a team that earlier that season beat Ohio State twice, Minnesota, Stanford, Houston and Baylor.
Somehow Phillips knew that in 2012, the last time Texas won it all, 10 years earlier, those Longhorns also had just one conference loss — in five at Iowa State.
There was no panic. Texas won its next 10 Big 12 matches, including a home sweep of Iowa State.
And the Big 12 season finished a week earlier than the other major conferences.
“We got lucky with our schedule. We had a whole week to train and we got to take a break from that game environment and just get better,” Phillips said. “It was like a reset for us. We got that weekend off and we were able to decompress a little bit and then dive into the tournament. That was really beneficial.”
And the theme?
“We trained really hard for those five days and worked on things that we needed to get better at,” Phillips said. “We have an offense. We knew that. But we wanted to get better defensively and by the end of the year we wanted to be the best defensive team in the country. We knew that when we got to the tough games at the end that if we wanted to win, that’s how we were going to do it.”
Molly Phillips hits through the Fairleigh Dickinson block/Matt Smith photo
Texas, playing at home for the first four matches, swept Fairleigh Dickinson (Phillips had six kills with one error in 13 attacks) and then Georgia (6-0-13) the first weekend. Then they beat Marquette (8-1-18, three blocks) in four and Ohio State (5-1-12, six blocks) in four.
Phillips’ hitting numbers were incredible — 25 kills with three errors in 56 swings in four matches.
“She sees space at a really high level,” Elliott said. “She’s got great command of the ball and has the shots, and she knows how to play with depth, which not a lot of young players know how to do. She’ll hurt you because she has the ability to put the ball where she wants to.”
It was on to Omaha — in the same arena in which it lost to Kentucky two seasons earlier — for the national semifinals. Phillips knew the history, that in the previous decade the Longhorns were also close but never won.
Pressure?
‘Yeah, I think the thought that we need to win is always there. Not even need to. We want to. We want to bring it back to this university. That’s why you come here, we have that tradition and that name. We don’t come here to lose.”
San Diego gave the Longhorns all they could handle before Texas won 26-28, 25-16, 25-18, 25-20. Phillips had 14 kills with five errors in a season-high 34 attacks, a block and two digs.
Two days later, as they headed into the championship match against Louisville, “We were really loose, confident and comfortable. Jerritt said that in serve and pass.”
In a classic example of the cliche that it was closer than the score indicates, Texas beat Louisville 25-22, 25-14, 26-24. Phillips had six kills with one error in 16 swings and two blocks.
Molly Phillips reaches high against Louisville/Texas photo
She got two of her kills in the first set, including the first Texas point of the match after Louisville took a 3-0 lead. She got the first point of the second set and then one late.
In the third set, Phillips had kills for the first two points.
The set was tied at 24 when Akana subbed for Phillips. Eggleston got a kill and then Akana had a walk-off ace to win the national title.
“We finally did it and there was this sigh of relief,” Phillips admitted. “It was kind of bittersweet. Normally when you go through a season with a team you lose and it’s done. There’s a reason the season is over. But we didn’t lose, and I was like, ‘Who do we play now?’ It was kind of weird being done on a win.
“It feels great, you want to end on a win, but it was the weirdest feeling.”
It gave Texas a record of 105-9, 61-3 in Big 12, for her time in Austin.
When this season ends in December, Phillips will likely move on. She wants to pursue beach volleyball and has graduate-student eligibility.
“I hope that’s what I do long-term,” Phillips said, adding that she also won’t rule out playing professionally indoors, too. For that matter, she’s joined the League One Volleyball team, so she would have that as a domestic pro option.
She also has an endorsement deal with simplyFUEL Protein Balls.
“Molly is an absolute gem of a human and everything you could want in a partner to represent your brand,” said Mitzi Dulan of SimpyFUEL. “After I found out she loved my simplyFUEL Protein Balls, I had a Zoom meeting with her and it was a no-brainer that I wanted to make it happen.
“She’s an obvious queen on the court and a national champion, but I have been super impressed with her level of professionalism at such a young age with our partnership. We recently did a video/photo shoot in Austin and she absolutely crushed it.”
Chances are there will be a lot more endorsements coming her way. Texas is loaded and ranked No. 1 for good reason, despite losing Eggleston and Fleck.
The Longhorns take a trip to California to open the season at Long Beach State and Saturday at Loyola Marymount and then head to No. 7 Minnesota on August 29.
All of which sets up the showcase match of the pre-conference season when No. 3 Stanford visits Austin on September 3, a Sunday-morning affair that will be shown on ESPN2.
Gregory Gym, the 4,000-seat ideal on-campus volleyball facility, will be rocking.
“I love how much Austin loves volleyball.,” Phillips said. “There are a lot of cities that are like that, but Austin is so big and there’s a lot going on and people still love volleyball. It’s awesome.”
