Kentucky sweeps Cleveland State to advance in the NCAA Volleyball Tournament
Kentucky volleyball’s roll continues.
The Wildcats extended their consecutive match win streak to 12 on Thursday night, sweeping the Cleveland State Vikings 3-0 in the first round of the NCAA Volleyball Tournament sub-regional in Memorial Coliseum.
No. 11 in the ACVA rankings, coach Craig Skinner’s Cats (21-7) next face No. 15 Minnesota on Friday at 7 p.m. for a spot in the regional semifinals. Minnesota (21-10) advanced with a 25-22, 25-20, 19-25, 25-23 win over Western Kentucky in Thursday’s first match at Memorial. WKU’s season ended 28-7.
In the nightcap, Kentucky rolled in straight sets 25-15, 25-14 and 25-16.
“I thought our team did a good of producing offensively and holding Cleveland State’s attackers to a low percentage,” said Skinner, whose Cats are coming off their eighth consecutive SEC championship.
SEC Player of the Year Brooklyn DeLeye led the way for Kentucky with 15 kills. Erin Lamb added 10 kills. Megan Wilson totaled eight and Jordyn Dailey seven. Kentucky finished with a hit percentage of 39.1. Cleveland State’s hit percentage was 11.4.
“Brooklyn is awesome,” Lamb said afterward. “Shes’ the hardest worker at her craft. She puts so much time and energy into the game.”
“You usually get out of something what you put into it,” Skinner said of DeLeye. “She’s very intentional about it.”
Kentucky jumped to an early 9-2 lead in the first set and carried on from there.
“I think we just knew we had to jump from the start,” DeLeye said. “You can’t really start a game coming in soft. I mean we knew they were going to come out swinging and that’s kind of what they did. But I think we did a really good job of stopping that and playing our game.”
“Kentucky is an amazing team,” said Cleveland State coach Chuck Voss, whose team earn an NCAA bid by winning the Horizon League Tournament. “They just do things that we just don’t see. You can see they are taking things from the men’s game and applying them.”
Marking its first NCAA Tournament since 2017, Cleveland State finished with a 23-10 record.
Kentucky is the No. 3 seed in the regional headed by No. 1 seed and top-ranked Pittsburgh. The 2020 NCAA Champions have reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament in six of the past seven years.
Minnesota is the No. 6 seed in the regional. The Gophers own wins over two-time defending national champion Texas and Big Ten power Wisconsin.
Kentucky’s last loss was to Texas 3-0 on Oct. 13.
“They’ve had some great wins this year,” said Skinner of Minnesota. “They’ve got some arms that hit the ball extremely hard. They’ll put some tough serves on us. They’re a team of streaks. They can give up some points, but I think that has been shown all day today in the NCAA Tournament. There’s a lot of runs of points.”
This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 9:34 PM.
