Led by Madison Lilley’s vision, Kentucky volleyball one win away from national title
For Kentucky volleyball, the dream of a national title is a short distance away after a long journey.
“It’s a long time coming, to say the very least,” UK star Madison Lilley said Friday.
Now it’s here as Saturday night at the CHI Health Arena in Omaha, the No. 2 seed Wildcats (23-1) will face the No. 4 seed Texas Longhorns (27-1) in the national championship match of the NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Tournament. ESPN2’s broadcast is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.
The Cats will be lead by Lilley, the 5-foot-11 senior setter from Overland Park, Kansas, who before being this season’s SEC Player of the Year and American Volleyball Coaches Association Player of the Year, was a seventh-grade camper from Kansas City whose considerable skills caught the eye of UK head coach Craig Skinner.
“She could have gone a number of places and been an All-American and done great things for so many programs,” Skinner said Friday. “For (her) to trust and see the vision we were trying to build at Kentucky was the first step. And then the second is performing and trusting the people around here.”
Lilley has performed and then some. Kentucky has gone 103-17 in her four years on campus, with four SEC titles, four NCAA Tournament bids, an Elite Eight appearance in 2017 and the program’s first Final Four trip this year, in addition to a berth in the national championship match.
“This is everything that I planned to do, why I came here, why I chose Kentucky,” Lilley said Friday. “I think the reason why it was the perfect fit and has been everything I wanted and more is because of the people, because of our coaching staff — Craig, Anders (Nelson), Katy Poole and our strength staff. Just the way that everyone really treats it like a family is the reason I chose to come here. And I knew that if the people I’m around every single day are people that I love and want to play for and want to play with, everything else will fall into place.”
“She’s someone that sees the good and the great qualities of people on the floor and has an ability to highlight people’s strengths and use them to her advantage as a setter,” Skinner said. “I think that’s an intangible quality that’s hard to teach.”
In Omaha, UK has been hard to beat. The Cats rolled through their first three matches with straight-set victories. But they dropped the second set and fell behind in the third to No. 6 Washington before rallying for a 3-1 win.
Now comes Texas, a two-time national champion that swept No. 1 seed Wisconsin on Thursday. Coached by Jerritt Elliott, the Longhorns defeated Kentucky in an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 match back in 2011.
“Texas is going to serve tough, they’re going to be a big block,” Lilley said. “Like I said before, I love our transition game. We play hard, we play fast. I think that is something that is extremely in our advantage.”
Some would have said UK didn’t have all that many advantages back when Lilley first visited campus as a seventh-grader.
“In those moments, it didn’t seem like anything major, just seemed like something fun to do,” Lilley said of her first UK volleyball camp.
“But I also stayed with (current teammate Gabby Curry) at camp once before we were committed and I remember she headed out early because she was headed to a different camp and I remember being like, ‘Dang, I really like her. I wish we could stay one more night in our dorm together.’”
It’s that same college life Lilley said she wants to experience after Saturday night. She said Friday she will not take advantage of the extra year granted by the NCAA because of COVID-19.
“I’m moving on,” Lilley said. “I’m focusing on (Saturday) for sure and then after that, just debriefing and kind of just enjoying the college life, enjoying time with my roommates. Kind of at the top of my priority list is to bask in everything.”
Including, she hopes, a national championship.
Saturday
No. 2 seed Kentucky vs. No. 4 Texas
What: Championship match of the NCAA Women’s Volleyball Tournament
When: 8 p.m. EDT
Where: CHI Health Arena in Omaha, Neb.
TV: ESPN2
Records: Kentucky 23-1, Texas 27-1
Series: Texas leads 14-3
Last meeting: Texas won 3-1 on Sept. 7, 2018, at Austin, Texas
This story was originally published April 23, 2021 at 4:11 PM.
