Cultural shift: Seniors provide glimpse of No. 10 BYU men's volleyball's previous heights

PROVO — For a moment, time stood still and then reversed to a former age when BYU and USC were at the top of men's college volleyball.

The sold-out Smith Fieldhouse. The deafening roar of arguably the loudest volleyball venue in the country. And BYU setter Tyler Herget turned to the student section and let out a roar of his own.

Herget had a season-high 55 assists Friday night in a 4-1 win over the fourth-ranked Trojans, then nearly topped it again with 63 assists in a five-set loss to USC just 24 hours later.

He's a bit of a mad man, in a good way — even if it's the exact opposite of who he is, teammate Jackson Fife said.

"I love the way he plays; he'll just randomly scream," said Fife, a libero from Las Vegas who will enroll in dental school at Roseman University of Health Sciences in South Jordan after the season. "He's so calm, and then all of a sudden, boom, he just flips the switch and starts screaming. But he's a super calm guy off the court; I don't think I've ever heard him raise his voice.

"But he's a competitor, and a very good player."

What the senior from Darien, Connecticut, who started his career at Penn State showed was that BYU — the three-time national champion that hasn't been back to the NCAA Tournament since a 3-0 loss to Hawaii in the 2021 national championship match — was on its way back. Maybe not there yet, but getting closer.

With a weekend split of the heavily-favored Trojans, the 10th-ranked Cougars (20-9) clinched a 20-win season for the first time since 2018. And while the wins and losses may be what most fans remember of the four seniors that BYU honored Saturday night — from Herget to GCU transfer Trent Moser, junior college transfer Cole Hauser and fifth-year stalwart Fife — the biggest change around the program during the years those seniors spent together came inside the locker room, head coach Shawn Olmstead said.

"These guys have entirely changed our culture," an emotional Olmstead said after Saturday night's match. "It's a credit to them. I say it over and over, but I've got the best team on campus: culture, energy, vibe. And there's zero doubt in my mind that is still the case.

"Trent left, and not under great circumstances," he added of Moser, who played two seasons at BYU, transferred to Grand Canyon for his junior year and returned to finish out his college career after the Lopes abruptly terminated the program. "When those things went down, he was immediately in touch with these guys, and within minutes we were on the phone to come back. That's a credit to our team and to our culture. He had offers to go to a lot of big schools, and he said he wanted to come back as long as we were good with it. But again, it's a credit to the guys."

Then there's Herget, the son of former BYU linebacker Todd Herget who won an EIVA championship in 2023 as a freshman at Penn State, then transferred a year later to the college town where he had spent time as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He'll leave BYU with more than 2,600 career assists, a top-10 mark nationally with 10.07 assists per set, and a final year of playing alongside younger brother Trevor before he heads off with his accounting degree for a job at Ernst & Young in northern Virginia.

All Herget wanted, though, was to leave the team better than when he arrived three years prior.

"All of us just wanted to be ourselves," he said. "I think that's what's most important.

"Everyone embraces each other," Herget added. "And I think Shawn stresses culture because it can actually make a difference, in how we play, how we practice, and even when not necessarily the outcome it can affect how we get to the outcome."

Teammates and coaches insist that the calm, collected setter who has a tendency to scream and yelp with excitement in the middle of a match has done just that.

"He's been the underdog his whole life," Olmstead said. "But I'll go to battle with that guy forever. He's uber confident; you can look at a lot of great setters around the country, that do different things in flashy and crazy way. But Hergie just gets the job done. His guys love to play for him, they put their hearts out there for him — because he does it first for them.

"But I go back to that culture they changed. ... I think it really helped our guys."

BYU will wrap up the regular season on the road at top-ranked UCLA next Thursday and Saturday before returning home to host the MPSF Tournament beginning Tuesday, April 21 (7 p.m. MST, Big 10+).

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