Kentucky volleyball suffers stunning SEC defeat to unranked opponent
Kentucky’s pursuit of a fifth consecutive Southeastern Conference volleyball championship just became more difficult.
The fifth-ranked Wildcats suffered a surprising and uncharacteristic five-set defeat at unranked South Carolina on Thursday night and saw their SEC lead reduced to a half-game over second-place Mississippi State and Florida.
The stunning loss ended a 10-match winning streak for the Wildcats (16-4 overall, 9-1 SEC). Kentucky was to face the Gamecocks (13-10, 5-8) again Friday night in Columbia, S.C. After that, seven matches remain in the regular season, including two to close the campaign at home against 23rd-ranked Florida. UK is now 25-3 against South Carolina dating back to 2003.
Kentucky’s losses this season have come against current No. 24 Creighton, No. 4 Wisconsin, No. 2 Louisville and now South Carolina. UK was defeated only once during its 24-1 national championship season of 2020-21, falling to then-No. 7 Florida.
South Carolina’s victory Thursday night ended a 13-match losing streak against Kentucky during which the Gamecocks won only five total sets off the Wildcats.
“October was rough. We did not play our best volleyball in the month of October,” South Carolina Coach Tom Mendoza said after the match. “I think it’d be really easy for our players to start looking at winter break and just say let’s get through these last six matches. For them to stay committed to each other and stay committed to the program, I’m very proud of them for that and I’m happy that they got rewarded with the win.”
South Carolina won Thursday night’s match by scores of 26-24, 17-25, 13-25, 25-20 and 15-12.
Kentucky fell behind 6-3 in the decisive fifth set but recovered to tie things 6-6. The Gamecocks pushed ahead 8-6 but the Cats evened the match again at 11 on a kill by Alli Stumler. South Carolina called a timeout, then proceeded to score the next three points to take command at 14-11 and ultimately win at 15-12.
Stumler led all players in the match with 21 kills. Madi Skinner and Reagan Rutherford had 19 each for UK. Emma Grome had a career-high 63 assists, and the Wildcats hit .345 for the match but South Carolina’s series of big defensive plays down the stretch was too much to overcome.