Volleyball Cats Handle Business at Hand, Sweep Aggies
The Kentucky volleyball program has won seven consecutive Southeastern Conference championships. With about three weeks left in SEC play for 2024, the Cats find themselves tied for first yet again, in pursuit of that eighth straight crown.
Kentucky entered Friday’s match against Texas A&M controlling its own destiny. Should the Cats win out, they will be champs once again this year. However, including Friday, there were six matches remaining in the season and the Cats must take them one step at a time.
UK was able to do just that on Friday night, downing the Aggies in three sets (25-22, 25-20, 25-14) inside Historic Memorial Coliseum.
Kentucky head coach Craig Skinner talked about how his team was able to remain focused despite those long-term goals being within reach.
“I think it’s fairly easy because every team has shown the level of play good enough to beat anyone in the league,” Skinner said. “I don’t think this group is overconfident in the fact that just because we show up, we’re going to win. Every team has proven that they can beat good teams. They’re competitive maturity has gotten better and better as the season has gone on. We had a really good week of practice and I think it showed, especially in the first set when A&M was playing really well. We need to expect every team to play like that against us.”
Freshman Asia Thigpen, who had 13 kills and seven digs on Friday, knows that handling the now rather than what’s down the road is important for her team.
“Just making sure that we’re taking every practice in the moment, every match in the moment, every point in the moment and not looking forward. If we just focus on ourselves and practice our butts off, then it will pay off.”
The Cats would fall behind in set one, trailing by as many as three points. However, UK rallied late, winning four of the last five points in the set to jump ahead in the match. Skinner liked his team’s response early.
“Proud of the group,” Skinner said. “A&M came at us early in the first set and we were able to weather some storms and got better and better as the match went on. Proud of the team.”
Sophomore Brooklyn DeLeye continued her monster season on Friday. DeLeye had 20 kills in the victory, coming up just short of the UK record of 22 kills in a three-set match (in the rally scoring era), a record held by Kentucky legend Leah Edmond.
Fellow sophomore Molly Tuozzo also approached a Kentucky record in the match. Tuozzo had 22 digs, two short of the UK rally scoring era record held by BriAnne Sauer.
Kentucky’s job is to handle what’s immediately in front of them rather than focusing on the long-term goal of another SEC title. On Friday night, the Cats did exactly that in a sweep of the Aggies.
