O'Brien Continues to Direct Potent Kentucky Offense

At the beginning of the 2025 season, UK head coach Craig Skinner announced that Ava Sarafa would be the team’s starting setter. Incoming freshman Kassie O’Brien was relegated to a backup role.

However, O’Brien took over the setter job during the Cats’ trip to Penn State, where UK faced both the host team and New Hampshire.

Since then, the Cats have hit .581 against New Hampshire, .336 against top 10 SMU, and .340 on Wednesday in a Southeastern Conference-opening sweep over South Carolina. Again, it was O’Brien directing the UK offense with 40 assists in the match. It was the seventh consecutive match in which O’Brien has had at least 30 assists. Skinner thought O’Brien did a nice job of distributing the ball to several hitters on Wednesday.

“I thought it started pretty good and then we went away from it,” Skinner said. “Then it got better as the match went on. Kassie starting finding some other people, especially in the third set, and the middles got involved. Finding the rhythm and connection with those guys is important and Kassie did a really good job of that as the match went on.”

Skinner praised O’Brien for her work ethic and competitive nature.

“She never takes a point off, never satisfied, always responds when she doesn’t do things the way she wants to, but also responds when she does things great,” Skinner said. “She’s a competitor and her and Ava have really made each other better over the course of the season and continue to do that. The way we’ve used them makes a coach proud of the way they handle it.”

O’Brien feels lucky to have so many weapons at her disposal on every point.

“I think it’s super cool how we just have so many powerhouses on this team,” she said. “It makes it really easy and we just communicate very well with each other. I feel like we’re still working through some things. It’s not always perfect but each day, we just go into practice with that mindset of wanting to get that connection down to a tee.”

Despite the sweep in the SEC opener, Skinner is looking for more from his team moving forward.

“Our numbers were good in a lot of different areas,” he said. “I didn’t quite think we met our standard, the way we play, but that’s in conference (matches), you’re going to get everybody’s best shot. I’m proud about the win but we’ve got to get better in some areas.”

With O’Brien directing the offense, the Cats seem to be finding their rhythm, which was proven again on Wednesday as UK won for the fifth consecutive match.