UK volleyball eliminated in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16. Season ends with loss to SEC rival.
For the second straight year, the Kentucky volleyball season has ended at the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 stage.
On Thursday evening in Lincoln, Nebraska, Arkansas defeated Kentucky in a regional semifinal (22-25, 25-22, 25-15, 22-25, 15-10) to advance to the first Elite Eight in Razorbacks history.
Kentucky — which defeated Arkansas twice during the regular season — finishes the 2023 season with a 21-8 record and a seventh straight SEC regular season championship.
Arkansas will face regional host Nebraska — the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament — in the Elite Eight at 6 p.m. Saturday in a match that will be broadcast on ESPNU.
The five-set thriller between the Wildcats and Razorbacks was dominated by Arkansas graduate outside hitter Jill Gillen, who totaled a match-high 20 kills along with 12 digs.
Kentucky was led by four players with double-digit kills: Freshman Brooklyn DeLeye (16), junior Erin Lamb (15), fifth-year Azhani Tealer (12) and senior Reagan Rutherford (11).
DeLeye finished her first college season — during which she earned SEC Freshman of the Year honors — with double-digit kills in 21 matches. DeLeye finished the season with 391 total kills, good for an average of 3.69 kills per set.
Tealer was among the Wildcats who saw their college careers end with Thursday’s loss. According to UK, Tealer is the only known SEC student-athlete to have won and played on five-straight SEC title-winning teams.
Junior setter Emma Grome finishes the 2023 season with 1,307 assists. Entering Thursday’s matches, Grome was the only player in the country averaging more than 12 assists per set.
“I think probably as coaches, you don’t really realize good or great setting until you don’t have it,” Skinner said prior to the Arkansas match.
The 31 attacking errors UK committed in Thursday’s loss to Arkansas were the most attacking errors made in a match all season by the Wildcats.
UK also made 10 service errors and had a team hitting percentage of .184.
The victory was Arkansas’ first win over UK since 2012. Kentucky had won 18 straight matches in the series.
It took Kentucky six set points to finally claim the first set over Arkansas on Thursday, and the Razorbacks took momentum from that ending into the second and third sets, which the Razorbacks won. While Kentucky was able to win the fourth set to establish a winner-takes-all fifth set, Arkansas quickly got out to a 6-2 lead in the deciding set and never looked back.
The Razorbacks’ experience in close matches this season probably helped their cause as well: Entering the Sweet 16 showdown, Arkansas had been 5-2 (now 6-2) in matches that went the distance this season. Kentucky was only 2-1 (now 2-2).
The Wildcats had defeated the Razorbacks in five sets in Lexington on Oct. 22, but weren’t able to repeat that feat in the national postseason.
Kentucky season ends with Sweet 16 trip, SEC championship
Despite starting the 2023 season with a 2-6 record in nonconference play and splitting the opening weekend of SEC matches inside Rupp Arena, Kentucky went on a run of 18 straight wins that stretched from Sept. 24 until Thursday.
That 18-match winning streak — which was the longest active streak in the nation — featured the emergence of DeLeye, a return from injury for Rutherford and the consistent, all-around team play that UK has become known for under head coach Craig Skinner.
With a 17-1 mark in league matches, Kentucky captured the outright SEC championship for the fourth time in the last seven years.
UK has now won at least a share of the SEC championship in seven straight seasons.
Kentucky has reached the Sweet 16 nine times under Skinner, who became UK’s head coach in December 2004.
This story was originally published December 7, 2023 at 8:05 PM.
