With 18 kills from National Freshman of the Year Kathryn Plummer and 16 from redshirt senior leader and tournament Most Outstanding Player Inky Ajanaku, Stanford defeated Texas 3-1 to win the 2016 NCAA Division I women's volleyball championship.

No. 4 seeded Texas swept defending national champion and No. 1 seed Nebraska in the semifinal rounds, but it was Stanford that gained the lead early in the national championship match. Senior outside hitter Paulina Prieto Cerame, who was such a star for the Longhorns in the semifinal, hit negative in the first two sets, and the team as a whole hit a lukewarm .192. With scores of 25-21 and 25-20, Stanford headed into the break with a 2-0 lead.

In the third set, Texas made some lineup changes, moving Yaasmeen Bedart-Ghani to the outside in place of Prieto Cerame, and bringing Orie Agbaji in to take Yaazie's spot in the middle. Maybe it was those adjustments, or Stanford's penchant for losing the third game, but the Longhorns hit .344 and won the set 25-18.

"After Game 2, we had to make a change," Texas head coach Jerritt Elliott said of the lineup changes. "We knew probably about midway through Game 2 that it just wasn't [Prieto Cerame's] night. She's had some of those nights and she's had nights where she's carried this team and done a good job."

Stanford rebounded in the fourth set, scoring six straight points before Texas managed to get on the board. Although they finally managed to stop that run, the Longhorns to get the point differential below three. Stanford earned match point at 24-20, but Plummer had a hitting error to give Texas one more shot. An out-of-system play ensued, and defensive specialist Kelsey Humphreys threw it outside, back to Plummer who tooled the block for the match.

"You know, it's overwhelming," Stanford head coach John Dunning said. "You put so much into this, and this is just a group that's just fun to be with. And I love being around them. And at that point it was kind of like, oh, my gosh, this is actually real."

"Stanford's had a legacy of really great players who haven't had this moment," Ajanaku said, "so for us to be able to bring it back, it's super humbling."

With such a young team, it's easy to already be thinking about next year. Stanford will lose seniors Ajanaku and Kelsey Humphreys, but hold on to freshmen Plummer, setter Jenna Gray, middle Audriana Fitzmorris, and libero Morgan Hentz for three more years and return 2015 National Freshman of the Year Hayley Hodson. But John Dunning says he can't think about replacing Ajanaku and Humphreys.

"You don't replace," he said. "That's one thing I know from coaching a long time. You redo."

Ajanaku earned the tournament's top honor, but when asked who she would nominate as the MVP, she said, "Morgan Hentz." Ajanaku also acknowledge the impact of head coach John Dunning, who now has five national championships, second only to Penn State's Russ Rose.

"John is one of the people who will continue to look you in the eye and say I will never give up on you," she said. "And that is a very rare thing, to have someone who wants you to succeed so much that he will try any method of coaching to make sure that you will succeed in the sport and as a person."