‘We know who we are.’ SEC champion UK volleyball ready for conference tournament
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky finished 22-2 and 15-0 in SEC, clinching the 2025 outright title
- Coach Skinner’s 21-year program sustained culture and development across roster
- Wildcats enter 2025 SEC Tournament as top seed, aiming SEC tourney and NCAA run
The No. 2 Kentucky volleyball team’s Sunday afternoon sweep (25-16, 25-20, 25-12) of Arkansas at Memorial Coliseum was bookended by two key moments that brought Big Blue Nation to its feet.
The first was at approximately 12:50 p.m. when UK (22-2, 15-0 SEC) held a special ceremony to honor its lone senior — and one-year Wildcat — All-America outside hitter Eva Hudson. The second came at the conclusion of the match, when the Wildcats had earned the outright Southeastern Conference regular-season championship for their ninth consecutive league title.
Not only were each of these celebrations emotional for the program’s players, coaches, families and fans, but they represented the impressive culture built by head coach Craig Skinner in his 21 seasons in Lexington.
The Wildcats had six new faces at the start of the year — Hudson and national freshman of the year contender Kassie O’Brien among them. There was a brutally difficult schedule that featured a late-August, 3-2 heartbreaker against No. 1 Nebraska and a Sept. 10 sweep by 2024 Final Four participant Pittsburgh. Yet there was an unyielding desire to win together.
“It means so much to us,” Hudson said. “It’s such a legacy to live up to, and I’m just proud of these girls for gritting it out. And honestly, the pressure is such an honor. So we’re just really happy to be here, but we have so much more to do.”
O’Brien noted that she and her teammates knew they had the potential to be great, and that the standard is to win a championship. But nothing could have prepared the freshman for just how good the Wildcats are this year. It wasn’t until the team bounced back adversity, she said, that the group realized its potential.
“After our first [lost] match going to Nebraska,” O’Brien said, “we showed them that we could hang with the top team in the nation. And then we came in and played [reigning national champion] Penn State that next weekend, and we got the sweep over them. So I think, after that moment, we were like, ‘We can do this. We know who we are. This year’s gonna be incredible.’”
During the regular season, the Wildcats defeated six of eight ranked opponents, all but two — a 3-1 victory over then-No. 10 SMU on Sept. 13 and a 3-1 win over then-No. 19 Tennessee on Nov. 9 — of which were played on the road.
During SEC play, the Wildcats recorded wins over the second- and third-place finishing teams of the league (Texas A&M and Texas, respectively), on the road. Kentucky also won both of its five-set matches in conference play and tallied seven sweeps against league foes.
Of the four players interviewed following the victory against Arkansas — Hudson, O’Brien, All-America dynamo junior outside hitter Brooklyn DeLeye and redshirt-junior middle blocker Lizzie Carr — each of them mentioned the roster’s close-knit relationships and relentless faith in the culture, and one another, as the differences between a good team and a championship one.
“We’re just so close on and off the court,” Hudson said. “We know we have each other’s back, no matter what. We’re always hanging out, always doing stuff together, so that bond is a really cool thing.”
“This group of girls,” O’Brien said. “we have such a strong connection on and off the court. And a lot of teams, they can play volleyball all together, but, outside of volleyball, they might not want to hang out with each other as much. I think we bring every moment together, and we love just being with each other.”
“Every team that I’ve been on here has just been different,” DeLeye said. “The culture … the style of play that we’ve been doing. So I think just this year, everybody has been bought in all along.”
“We feel like we’re ready for anything,” Carr said. “… I just think it’s really cool because we don’t have a doubt no matter what. Whether our backs are up against the wall, or we’re up by a ton, there’s not any sort of doubt in that type of a way.”
Each of Skinner’s Kentucky teams have been special, and many have achieved some of the highest highs in NCAA volleyball, most notably the 2020 national championship roster that earned bragging rights of bringing not only the first volleyball national championship to UK, but to the SEC, as well.
Technically, the road to a second national championship begins now. But really, the Wildcats have weathered the difficulties of that road all season long.
It has gone from a frustrating two-match stumble early in nonconference play to an impressive reverse-sweep on Friday, when Oklahoma went up two sets in Memorial Coliseum before UK won three straight to save its undefeated conference distinction.
“We had a lot to improve on,” DeLeye said. “And I think everybody just came into the gym every single day up until this point, just working on it and getting better. We still have so much more to prove, and, I mean, it’s just gonna be exciting.”
Beginning Friday, Nov. 21, at Enmarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia, the league will host the 2025 SEC Volleyball Tournament. Kentucky, the top overall seed, won’t play until noon Sunday.
The Wildcats, who are in pursuit of their sixth SEC Tournament title and first since 1988, have the potential to play three matchups in three days, with the championship match set to take place on Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. All matches played prior to Sunday will be available to watch on either the SEC Network or SEC Network+, and all matches Sunday and afterward can be watched on the SEC Network.
This story was originally published November 16, 2025 at 5:58 PM.
