Kentucky volleyball gets ready for big SEC weekend

After Kentucky volleyball lost at Missouri in five sets two weeks ago in a battle of the only two unbeaten teams in SEC play, Craig Skinner gave his team its usual Monday off, plus an extra day on Tuesday.

“I was nervous as a coach how we would respond to that,” Skinner admitted Wednesday.

Then 8 a.m. that Tuesday morning, the UK coach received a text message from strength coach John Spurlock.

It read: “We had our best lift of the year.”

So now Sunday brings the rematch between the two teams tied with Florida for first place in the SEC at 10-1. Missouri (19-4 overall) visits Memorial Coliseum for a noon match with 18th-ranked UK (17-5) in a showdown to be televised by the SEC Network.

“It’s a big weekend for us,” said Skinner before Wednesday’s practice. “We have a tough match Friday night with Auburn.”

Auburn, 7-4 in league play, had won five straight matches before losing at Tennessee last Sunday. Kentucky and Auburn met twice last year. UK won both by identical 15-13 scores in the fifth set.

Skinner’s squad then has a day to prepare for the Tigers, who won the first two sets in the first meeting before UK rallied to require a fifth set where Mizzou prevailed 25-21, 28-26, 16-25, 22-25, 15-12.

“There were probably two or three times where we could have folded and our team just kept battling back,” Skinner said. “You’re upset about the result but you couldn’t be upset about the resiliency and the fighting back.”

Then again, Skinner, in his 12th year at UK, has had high expectations for this team all along. With all but one starter returning, plus an outstanding freshman class led by Top 10 recruit Leah Edmond, the former Paul Laurence Dunbar star, Skinner felt his team could improve on last year’s team, which went 21-10 and earned the school’s 11th consecutive NCAA Tournament bid.

As a result, Skinner mapped out an ambitious early schedule — “Showed I don’t know what I’m doing,” he joked — that saw UK open with a 3-0 loss to Washington State at Purdue. After bouncing back to beat Wyoming and the host Boilermakers, the Cats headed West where they were swept by Southern Cal, beat Creighton, but then were swept by Northern Iowa.

“We learned so much the first two weeks,” Skinner said. “We just learned so much about where we were, what we had to improve on.”

After a 3-1 loss to Marquette left the Cats 3-4, jelling began. Kentucky won 13 straight matches, including its first sweep of No. 5 Florida in Gainesville since 1990.

“It was an opportunity to validate what we’re doing and I think give our players confidence in how they were playing and how we were preparing,” Skinner said.

Kaz Brown, a junior from Waterloo, Iowa, has been very good defensively, said the coach. Anni Thomasson, a senior from Newark, Ohio, has been a steady all-around force. Olivia Dailey, a sophomore from Tussville, Ala., has helped UK play “smooth and calm offensively.” And Edmond, the freshman star, has been a “huge point-scorer for us all year long.”

The loss at Missouri snapped the win streak, but Kentucky rebounded to sweep host Alabama last Sunday. Meanwhile, Missouri lost 3-1 at Texas A&M on Wednesday before sweeping host Mississippi State on Sunday. While UK plays at Auburn on Friday, Missouri travels to Tennessee.

Skinner said he likes the way his team has been willing to take risks, a key factor not just Sunday but in all seven remaining regular season games.

“We’ve got to be willing to take risks and go for the big kill,” he said. “Conservative doesn’t get you anywhere at the end of the year.”

This story was originally published November 2, 2016 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Kentucky volleyball gets ready for big SEC weekend."