Kansas coach Matt Ulmer acknowledges that his first team with the Jayhawks was perhaps not “the greatest roster that’s ever made a Sweet 16.”
Last year’s KU squad was a bit of a patchwork, with holdovers from the Ray Bechard era, some rather inexperienced, playing alongside select transfers, as well as a trio of international players who all took on greater roles but left for the transfer portal after the season. There were injuries, there was instability at setter and there was a brutal late-season road trip.
But while it might not have been an optimal amalgamation, it still grew beyond the results of previous years by reaching the third round of the NCAA Tournament “just by outworking people, I think, which is a great quality to have,” Ulmer said.
Now Ulmer has rebuilt the roster but hopes to maintain that same work ethic: “Hopefully now we don’t lose that quality, and now we maybe have a little bit of a roster that shapes more to a system that we’re trying to do. We can play a little bit better brand of volleyball.”
One key element of that new brand could be a faster tempo.
“It takes a lot of time to get used to because the faster the offense, the better the connection needs to be,” junior middle blocker Reese Ptacek said.
That means coordinating with one’s teammates at two stages — both defensively, to make a sufficiently fast pass, and then offensively, to develop enough of a rapport with one’s setters to take advantage of an equally fast set.
At setter, KU returns Cristin Cline, a fourth-year veteran who followed Ulmer from Oregon and averaged 8.24 assists per set in part-time action last year. The big addition is Reese Messer, who played in a fast-paced offense at USC, where she was a first-team All-Big Ten selection as a freshman setter, and was excited to learn she will have the chance to do the same at KU. She told the Journal-World in the spring that Ulmer was eager to give her free rein “to try things and do different things.”
Getting in sync with this pair, senior Aisha Aiono said, has been “a work in progress, but there’s been so much improvement with what I feel like has been a short time.”
“It’s building a lot off what we knew how Cris worked last year,” Ptacek added, “and then especially with Reese Messer, like the second she came in she was more talkative towards us, she was like, ‘How is this? How is this? What are we doing? This, this, this and that.’ And I was like, ‘All right, I kind of like this.'”
As a whole, the team has bought into pushing the tempo. Aiono said she’s used to playing slower, “but I love that we’re changing it.” The transition from one side of the ball to the other is the biggest obstacle.
“We’ve been focusing on having more efficient footwork, and being able to get up even if we can’t get a full transition, just always being available so that we can help our other teammates around us too,” Aiono said.
Ptacek said that in enacting a greater pace of play, Cline and Messer have in many ways led the charge by telling their teammates, “I think we can go a little faster.”
“I’m like, ‘Yeah. Let’s go a little faster,'” Ptacek said.
That’ll be one key element of keeping opposing defenses off balance in support of a more potent offensive team in 2026. Ulmer has made no secret of his excitement about the athleticism of his incoming freshman class.
“I think that the new faces have really bought into the culture that we’re trying to create,” Aiono said. “I think that they’re trying to apply the things that we’re learning and it’s really helping us out.”
The class is headlined by opposite hitter and preseason Big 12 Freshman of the Year Taylor Stanley, but it’s also one in which all six players can touch 10 feet, 3 inches. KU only had one player who could do that to start out last year. That level of leaping ability is an asset for the Jayhawks’ own offense, but also helpful for them to train against in practice.
“We weren’t a great offensive team last year,” Ulmer said. “Hopefully we can have some better offense this year. But as long as that work ethic is there and we continue to add, who knows? Who knows what we could do.”
Kansas middle blocker Reese Ptacek connects for a kill against Miami in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025 in Lawrence.
Kansas middle blocker Aisha Aiono connects for a kill attempt against UCF in Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena on Saturday, November 29, 2025 in Lawrence, Kansas.
KU sophomore Cristin Cline sets the ball for a hitter during the Jayhawks’ match against Arizona State on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, at the Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena in Lawrence.
USC’s Reese Messer sets the ball during a match against UCLA on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025, in Los Angeles.
Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World
Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World
Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World
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