'Winning the Ugly' Propels Cats on Wednesday
Sometimes, a sporting event can be a thing of beauty. Other times, a team might have to grind out a win when they face a tough opponent and/or don’t have their best.
On Wednesday night inside Historic Memorial Coliseum, the Kentucky volleyball team experienced the latter, winning a four-set slugfest over Auburn. Junior middle blocker Lizzie Carr said that sometimes, winning in less than beautiful fashion is what a team has to do at times.
“If it’s not our best, we always talk about winning the ugly,” Carr said. “Find ways to be able to grit through even when it might be a little bit ugly on our side. So, just trying to really fight through that and I think we’ve done a good job of that so far and I know that our mentality will continue to carry that through that.”
UK head coach Craig Skinner was pleased with how his team handled Wednesday’s match, especially when the Cats were out of system.
“I think we always preach that volleyball is typically 50 percent in system and 50 percent not,” Skinner said. “I’d say that it felt like more than 50 percent was not smooth and so we have to practice that, we have to train that, we have to learn how to be successful even when it’s not going right but we got better as the match went on.”
Skinner was please with the win and gave credit to Auburn for giving the Cats their best on Wednesday.
“Certainly pleased with that win,” Skinner said. “We expected Auburn to be a tough matchup tonight and they proved that. We had to weather some storms and had to make some plays defensively. They made some plays and we had to respond to that and we did that.”
Senior outside hitter Eva Hudson, who had 25 kills in Wednesday’s match, believes that communication is very important for the Cats, especially when they end up out of system, as they did often against the Tigers.
“Craig has the 80 percent rule and that’s where 80 percent of the time, you’re not touching the ball so what else are you doing,” Hudson said. “And one big thing we’ve been working on in practice is communication, especially in the in system, gritty play communication is what makes the difference between winning and losing.”
It may not have been the prettiest win that Kentucky has notched this season, but it was a win against Auburn on Wednesday and that’s the bottom line.
