The one UK head coach who truly ‘wants all the smoke?’ It’s Craig Skinner
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky volleyball scheduled matches against all top four preseason teams in 2025.
- Coach Craig Skinner credits elite competition for SEC title streak.
- Junior Brooklyn DeLeye and transfer Eva Hudson form potent left-side offensive duo for UK.
There are coaches who act as if they are exhibiting a profile in courage if they schedule even one ranked opponent on their non-conference slate.
Then there is the fearless scheduling approach of Kentucky volleyball coach Craig Skinner.
Over a stretch of 19 days in the coming season, from Aug. 31 through Sept. 18, Skinner has scheduled the No. 7 Wildcats to face the top four teams in the American Volleyball Coaches Association Preseason Top 25 poll — No. 1 Nebraska, No. 2 Penn State, No. 3 Pittsburgh and No. 4 Louisville.
Even if you’ve been following college sports since Adolph Rupp was a coaching pup, you cannot have seen many examples of that.
“There’s no chance in hell I’d schedule like this 10 or 15 years ago,” Skinner said Tuesday, “but times have changed, and we’re in a different spot as a program.”
Add UK’s Sept. 13 match against No. 10 SMU, and the Wildcats will have faced half the preseason top 10 in the season’s first three weeks.
Skinner said the fact that Kentucky is playing the entire preseason top four in 2025 is only partly due to planning.
UK, obviously, plays U of L every year. The Wildcats owed a return game to Penn State. But the matchups against Nebraska and Pitt at neutral sites (Nashville and Fort Worth, Texas, respectively) came via invitation.
“Nebraska was an invite. The Nashville Sports (Council) wants to do, like, a conference challenge,” Skinner said. “Pitt was an ACC/SEC Challenge where the conferences came along and were, like, ‘OK, (Kentucky), you are playing Pitt, and Texas, you are playing Louisville.’”
Since Skinner coached UK to the 2020 NCAA championship, the Wildcats’ non-league schedules have come to be filled by the elite programs in women’s college volleyball.
Since 2021, Kentucky has played 14 non-league matches against teams ranked in the AVCA poll’s top 10.
On the one hand, UK has gone 0-14 in those matches.
Yet Skinner says it is what Kentucky has learned about itself playing against the best of the best in the non-league season that has helped the Wildcats run their streak of SEC regular season championships won or shared to eight straight.
“The biggest thing that playing against really good teams prepares you for is the type of pressure you’re going to feel playing in (big) matches,” Skinner said. “It’s not just the atmosphere, pressure in terms of the quality of match, but the pressure they’re going to apply to you with their serving, what (vulnerability of yours) they’re attacking. You can’t simulate it in practice.
“So you can’t play teams that are 30 to 50 in the RPI and feel that type of pressure. And with our game being in such a confined space, decision making, time shrinks when you play against teams that apply that type of pressure. So I think you need to know what that feels like.”
To face the non-conference gauntlet he has scheduled, Skinner has what is likely his most intriguing roster since the NCAA championship team.
Junior outside hitter Brooklyn DeLeye enters 2025 a legitimate National Player of the Year candidate. Incoming Purdue transfer Eva Hudson is a first-team All-America caliber player. Interestingly, DeLeye and Hudson play the same position at left outside hitter.
“The nice thing about our sport, they play the same position ... but they’re on the floor at the same time,” Skinner said. “They’re opposite each other in the rotation, so when one’s in the front row, the other’s in the back row.”
Creating a dilemma for UK opponents, not only are both DeLeye and Hudson dynamic at the net, both are also adept at getting kills when set from the back row, Skinner said.
“They’re able to terminate as well as anybody over there,” Skinner said. “I think the question with this particular team is how do we balance that out. Not that we’re not going to rely on (DeLeye’s and Hudson’s) offensive production, because we will, but we’re going to have to find other ways to score against the best teams.”
The big question to be settled for Kentucky heading into Saturday’s season opener at Lipscomb is who will do the setting. A program that has gone from All-American Madison Lilley to All-American Emma Grome at setter will enter the season without a proven player at that position.
Redshirt sophomore Ava Sarafa and freshman Kassie O’Brien have been competing for the starting role at setter. Skinner says he is likely to announce the winner of that contest Thursday.
“You have two highly recruited setters, and they’re both battling it out,” Skinner said.
(Addendum: Skinner did in fact announce UK’s starting setter Thursday, with Sarafa earning the nod).
The degree of difficulty in Kentucky’s non-league schedule is not duplicated by the teams ranked ahead of the No. 7 Wildcats in the AVCA preseason poll.
Among Nebraska, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Texas and Stanford, only the Panthers are playing as many as two of the teams ranked in the top four of the preseason Top 25.
Then there are Skinner and UK, playing all four.
“I can’t wait,” Skinner said. “It’s time to put up or shut up, and then just keep plugging along until the end of the season.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2025 at 4:52 PM.
