Finally, the UK volleyball team can bury the past, sew up the wounds and move on.They tried not to show it last week, but the losses to Florida and Tennessee to close the regular season were devastating; the vanishing of the Southeastern Conference championship even more gut-wrenching.Now the healing can begin. With a dominating 3-0 victory over Michigan State on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the Cats can finally pick up the shattered glass and piece back together what could still be a promising season. UK will play No. 14 overall seed Oregon on Saturday at 7 p.m. inside Memorial Coliseum.”I knew that as we walked into the gym to start practice after two disappointing losses to end the season, we just had to refocus,” senior setter and captain Sarah Rumely said. “It’s our third season. We have three seasons: we have preseason, then conference and then the postseason. It was just a different mentality. It’s a new season.”But the Cats wouldn’t have been able to move on without putting their so-called “second season” behind them. “No one was happy about the losses,” junior outside hitter Sarah Mendoza said.Disappointment lingered for a few days, but it seemed to quickly disappear with two confidence-building practices. Head coach Craig Skinner preached all week that there was no other team he would rather coach to try to bounce back. He maintained his stance that the veteran leadership and experience on UK’s squad was unmatched by few teams in the country.Maybe we should start to listen a little closer. After all, five straight NCAA Tournament appearances clearly indicates the guy knows what he’s doing.UK rebounded with an extremely balanced, vengeful-like performance. Junior middle blocker Lauren Rapp led the way with 14 kills, but Mendoza added 13, sophomore middle blocker Gretchen Giesler tallied eight and sophomore middle blocker Becky Pavan notched six.Rumely had a hand in almost every offensive play, accumulating a match-high 39 assists. Maybe more impressive was the defensive intensity UK mustered, especially late in sets. The Cats, who have struggled with blocking a bit this year, notched 14 blocks and 47 digs. “When you make big blocks … those are the biggest momentum-changers in the game,” Skinner said. “We’ve always been good offensively this season – statistics speak for that – but I never believed we weren’t a good defensive team. We’ve just got so many kills a lot of times this year that our defense didn’t need to step up. Tournament time it does, and it did.”The defense might have been one of the bigger keys, but it wasn’t the biggest. That came from the Cats offensive mentality. No, I’m not talking about kills or assists; I’m talking about the will to get off the mat and fight.After letting a late-season loss linger over into the NCAA Tournament last year – a first-round boot from Michigan – UK was poised and experienced enough to come back to work and put the past behind it.”It’s a sign of a veteran team and a team that believes in (itself),” Skinner said. “That was very important for us to get this tournament started like that. … This team is so competitive and veteran leadership does a great job of getting us refocused, and I thought our practices this week really showed that. I’m very proud of the way we responded.”The most therapeutic part about bouncing back was just getting back on the court again. It was a chance to flip a rare sour note and redirect the season back to where it’s been headed all year: into the school annals as one of the best ever.”It was great to just step back out on the court,” Rumely said. “Every match I just love to compete and get back out there. We have a great team and a great team environment. It’s just so fun to compete every day. (I) was itching to get back out there.”Kentucky will get another chance Saturday. Friday was just one win and doesn’t by any means encompass the season-long goals. But it was a start for a team looking to bury a disappointing past and move on with the season’s biggest dreams.”Losing is never fun,” Skinner said. “I’ve always believed this team could do a lot of great things. We’ve continued to match records and certain things throughout this program, but we all know that if you don’t perform well enough to win, you go home tomorrow. We don’t want that to happen because we all enjoy what we’re doing.”
