The Florida volleyball team opened postseason play Friday night with a first round match against South Carolina State in the O’Connell Center.
The No. 1 Gators (28-1, 20-0 Southeastern Conference) were clearly bigger, stronger, faster and more talented than the Lady Bulldogs — winner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Florida easily won in straight sets 3-0 (25-7, 25-10, 25-12).
“I think that the numbers really speak for themselves, especially our hitting efficiency,” coach Mary Wise said. “We felt that we would have a matchup advantage because of our size.”
The Gators finished with a hitting percentage of .586 — the second-highest single-match hitting efficiency in school history. They also held South Carolina State to just -.042.
Florida dominated South Carolina State in virtually every category. The Gators won the blocking battle 8.5 to two, the dig battle 27 to 15, the service ace battle seven to one, the dig battle 27 to 15 and the kill battle 38 to 20.
“I thought that our serving really just never allowed South Carolina State to get in a rhythm offensively because you can see in their athletes that they have a team full of players with really fast arms and I can see how when they’re in system, they have the ability to get kills in lots of different positions,” Wise said. “Fortunately we served very well and they just never got on track offensively.”
Junior setter and 2010 SEC Player of the Year Kelly Murphy led the way for the Gators, hitting .700 while recording eight kills, 17 assists, two service aces and four digs.
The Gators will face Florida State today in the O’Connell Center at 7:30 p.m. Florida beat the Seminoles in straight sets 3-0 (25-23, 31-29, 25-21) on Sept. 22.
“We predicted that this would be a year where it’s just going to be not easy to advance so we’ll take this and move on and look forward to playing in a really big time match tomorrow night,” Wise said.
