Service Pressure, Offensive Attack Pace Cats on Wednesday
In Wednesday’s sweep over UCLA, the third-ranked Kentucky volleyball team used a potent one-two punch to defeat the Bruins for the second time in nine months.
It started in the first set with the Cats employing a lethal serving attack. Kentucky had five aces in that first frame on its way to a 25-13 set win. It was not only the aces, but the way that UK was able to take UCLA out of its offense by mixing its serves, according to head coach Craig Skinner.
“It was a clean night serving,” Skinner said. “Even though our short serve didn’t score a ton of points, it’s nice to have them thinking about it. We might be able to drop in some shorts and get them guessing about our depth. Anytime you can get a couple of aces early, it definitely puts the pressure on the passers to perform and our servers did a really good job with that tonight.”
Sophomore setter Kassie O’Brien knows that serving can be largely about momentum, as it was in Wednesday’s match.
“For sure,” O’Brien said. “I feel like once one server goes back there and starts getting a couple, it gives everyone else that confidence. Just using that to our advantage and that was really helpful in our game today.”
Kentucky finished the match with seven aces. Brynn Covell, Brooklyn DeLeye and O’Brien each had two, while Trinity Ward added one of her own.
If the service pressure was not enough, Kentucky got its offense going in the second set. The Cats notched 19 kills in that set with four hitting errors on 32 swings (.469 hitting percentage). For good measure, UK added another service ace in the set.
In the final set, Kentucky racked up 19 more kills and finished the match hitting .346 for the match. Skinner was pleased with the offensive output.
“Offensively, three pin hitters (Morgan Gaerte, DeLeye and Asia Thigpen) hitting over .300, Lizzy (Carr) .580,” Skinner said. “I thought Kassie did a really good job of getting the right people the ball at the right moments under pressure.”
O’Brien knows she has plenty of good options on the offensive side of the net.
“I feel like that’s what you want on a team,” O’Brien said. “You want to be able to go to anyone at a given point and just to see all of our attackers just going off in this game is so cool because it show us what we have on our team. It’s just awesome to be able to go to anyone at a given time and they’re able to execute.”
Between the service pressure and the offensive attack, Kentucky provided an effective one-two punch on Wednesday.
