Middle Blockers Come Up Huge for Cats in Win Over Mustangs

All season long, the Kentucky volleyball offense has been led by All-American outside hitters Eva Hudson and Brooklyn DeLeye. But as the Cats beat Cal Poly on Thursday in the regional semifinals of the 2025 NCAA Volleyball Tournament, the Cats looked inside, getting big production from their middle blockers.

As Kentucky swept Cal Poly to advance to the Elite Eight against Creighton on Saturday, Lizzie Carr and Kennedy Washington both provided a huge lift to the UK cause.

Carr, the redshirt junior from West Chester, Pennsylvania, started off strong on Thursday. In set one, she took five swings and had five kills. In fact, Carr produced kills on her first seven swings in the match. She finished with 11 kills and just one error on 15 attacks (.667). She added one solo block and five block assists in the match. Carr knows that having offense from the middle is important.

“We know that a lot of teams are going to draw a lot of attention to Brooklyn and Eva and so we have to find a way to score from another part of the court and tonight, (setter) Kassie (O’Brien) was able to put me and Kennedy in really good positions, and then we would score from the back side as well,” Carr said. “We were just able to score from other avenues at the court, which is going to be really important going forward.”

Washington was also solid for UK on Thursday. She had seven kills and no errors on 10 swings, computing to a .700 hitting percentage. Washington added one solo block and two block assists. O’Brien believes that the hard work in practice is paying off in matches.

“I think each day in practice, it’s something that we want to work on, and it just continues to grow,” O’Brien said. “And so tonight, I don’t know, we’re just kind of feeling it, and our passing did a great job to put us in a good position in order for you to do it to Lizzie and then to Kennedy, too. But I think being able to balance the difference between the two hitters has been a challenge, but, you know, they do a great job of communicating with me and we connect really well, and so just finding that connection has been really big.”

UK head coach Craig Skinner was asked if it was the plan to go to the middles tonight or if that’s just the way the match developed.

“I think a little bit of both,” Skinner said. “I think it was important, you know, (associate head coach) Kyle (Luongo) talked to the starts about the game plan before the match, and definitely establishing the middle is important in any match. As it continued to go very well, there’s no reason to go away from it. You know, so we’re continuing to score, got to keep going. Cassie did a really good job of finding them, both in serve, receive and transition.”

With DeLeye and Hudson drawing attention on the outside, it’s important for Kentucky to be able to score from other locations. They did just that in Thursday’s win.