With no Friday match this weekend, Florida had ample time to prepare for Sunday’s showing against Kentucky.
The extra rest proved helpful as the No. 1 Gators (18-1, 11-0 Southeastern Conference) defeated the Wildcats (11-11, 5-7 SEC) in straight sets 3-0 (25-21, 28-26, 25-13).
The Gators have won both meetings this season against their SEC foe. They defeated the Wildcats in Lexington, Ky., 3-1 (18-25, 25-19, 25-13, 25-20) on Sept. 17.
“I thought Kentucky came in here, played really loose and played hard,” coach Mary Wise said. “There were some good rallies early on. I don’t know that the first two sets were necessarily great volleyball execution and we didn’t see that until the third set.”
Although the Gators won the first two sets, they did not play their best. During that stretch, the Gators were outhit and out-blocked—Kentucky hit .333 and .276 with five total blocks; the Gators hit .312 and .226 with only one block.
“It was kind of like which team was going to make the fewer number of errors, but that’s rally scoring,” Wise said. “Unforced errors are magnified because of rally scoring and I have to give credit to Kentucky. Up until the third set, they were toe-to-toe with us.”
The deciding set was a different story. Florida hit .611 with five blocks and held Kentucky to a hitting percentage of -.100 and zero blocks.
“In basketball, play looks so much cleaner when the shots are going in,” Wise said. “In volleyball, it looks so much cleaner when they’re clean kills.”
The Gators finished the day with a .346 hitting percentage while the Wildcats finished at .207.
“When we block balls, that is when we are at our best,” Wise said. “If we are not getting touches on the block, we’re not as good in the back row. So what we need to do is be really good in the front row all the time.”
Senior outside hitter Callie Rivers hit .375 with eight kills, six digs and a service ace.
“In between games two and three, we really sat down and talked about what we needed to work on and improve on for that next game because we didn’t feel like we were playing at our true potential,” Rivers said. “We just tried to focus on the things that, if we did better, it would help us win.”
Junior setter Kelly Murphy came up big for the Gators, as usual. Murphy hit .526 with 12 kills, 16 assists and two blocks.
Senior libero Erin Fleming recorded a match-high 12 digs and freshman setter Chanel Brown had 18 assists and two service aces — both team-highs.
“In the first two sets, we were missing plays that we should have made,” Rivers said. “Kentucky obviously played really, really well, but there were also things that we thought that we could correct. In the third set, we really tried to think about what we’d worked on the past three days in practice and implement those things.”
