In first of several marquee matchups, UK volleyball falls flat against national champions
One of the highest-profile regular season UK volleyball matches in Memorial Coliseum history ended in a three-set sweep for the visitors on Friday night in Lexington.
In a meeting between the two most recent NCAA champions, it was the 2021 champions Wisconsin that secured a straight-sets victory over the 2020 champions Kentucky (who also won their title in 2021 after the NCAA Tournament was pushed back due to COVID).
Wisconsin, the No. 6 team in the country, has now defeated Kentucky twice in as many years, with Friday’s road victory coming after the Badgers won a four-set match at home last season. Friday night’s win came by scores of 25-23, 28-26 and 25-18.
While Kentucky finished Friday’s match with statistical advantages over Wisconsin in areas like assists (40-37), digs (42-34) and kills (43-39), the Wildcats also made more mistakes than their opponents.
UK had 11 service errors in the match and 19 attacking errors, while also recording an attack percentage of just 23.1% over the three sets.
Kentucky had entered Friday’s match as the top team in the country in attack percentage, and the 23.1% success rate against Wisconsin represented UK’s worst attack percentage since last season’s NCAA Tournament second-round loss to Illinois.
“We had a lot of kills, but too many mistakes and not enough pressure with our serve to get (Wisconsin) out of some of the things they wanted to do,” Kentucky head coach Craig Skinner said after the match. “Serving is one of those things, when you’re in practice you’ve got to put yourself into the game every single time. I don’t think we did that in practice this week.”
Skinner said Kentucky didn’t have a great week of practice leading up to Friday night’s match, which was played in front of an announced crowd of 3,093 people.
Despite the miscues, junior opposite Reagan Rutherford continued her strong play after earning tournament MVP honors during UK’s visit to Omaha, Nebraska, last weekend (where the Cats recorded a pair of Top 25 wins).
Rutherford led Kentucky against Wisconsin with 13 kills and was the only UK player to hit above 30% against a Wisconsin team that seemingly glided across the Taraflex playing surface when chasing the ball.
“If you don’t pass the ball inside the 10-foot line you give big blockers a chance to set up and do what they want to do,” Skinner said of the Badgers, who had 15 blocks in the match. “So when the big block is there, that shrinks the court behind them so the defense, it’s a little bit easier for them to cover ground.”
Dating back to last weekend’s matches against Creighton and Southern California in Omaha, Friday’s contest against Wisconsin continued a stretch of what will be five of six matches against ranked opponents for Kentucky.
More ranked opponents ahead
Friday night’s straight-sets defeat to Wisconsin marked the start of a marquee stretch of volleyball for UK inside Memorial Coliseum.
In a 10-day period, 14th-ranked Kentucky is scheduled to host No. 6 Wisconsin, No. 4 Louisville and No. 2 Nebraska in Lexington.
Next up is a Wednesday night matchup against Louisville, which was 6-1 on the season entering a Saturday night match against Lipscomb.
Last year, the Cards and Cats played an epic five-set match in Louisville that was won by the Cardinals.
A scintillating September
Kentucky’s results and schedule for this month. Home matches in all capital letters:
Sept. 2: Northern Iowa (W, 3-0)
Sept. 3: No. 17 Creighton (W, 3-1)
Sept. 3: No. 25 Southern Cal (W, 3-0)
Sept. 9: No. 6 WISCONSIN (L, 3-0)
Sept. 10: INDIANA STATE, (n)
Sept. 14: No. 4 LOUISVILLE, 7 p.m. (ESPN or ESPN2)
Sept. 18: No. 2 NEBRASKA, 3 p.m. (ESPNU)
Sept. 24: LSU, 4 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
Sept. 25: LSU, Noon (SEC Network)
Sept. 28: At Missouri, 7 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
This story was originally published September 10, 2022 at 8:56 AM.
