As Kelly Murphy goes, so do the Gators — for better or for worse.
On a day when the All-American had trouble getting into a rhythm, No. 6 Florida (9-3, 2-1 Southeastern Conference) followed suit, falling to Tennessee 3-2 (25-21, 20-25, 25-21, 19-25, 18-16) Sunday in the O’Connell Center.
“They played great defense the whole night and made it really hard on us trying to find kills,” Murphy said. “We never really found our own energy.”
The senior setter got off to a slow start for the Gators, recording just one kill until midway through the second set.
She hit a season-low .171 for the match, but still managed to record her 26th career triple-double with 10 kills, 21 assists and 14 digs.
“You’re only as good as your best player and our best player had an off night — it happens,” UF coach Mary Wise said.
While Murphy struggled against the Volunteers, senior outside hitters Kristy Jaeckel and Stephanie Ferrell were there to pick up the slack offensively.
Jaeckel led the Gators with 16 kills while Ferrell chimed in with 14 and a .400 hitting percentage against Tennessee (11-2, 4-0 SEC).
However, Ferrell was even more efficient in Friday’s 3-1 (25-12, 25-19, 23-25, 25-18) victory against Kentucky (12-3, 3-1 SEC), hitting a season-high .588.
“Stephanie was really good offensively, but she didn’t give us anything defensively,” Wise said.
Two players who did get the job done defensively against Tennessee were middle blocker Betsy Smith and right-side hitter Tangerine Wiggs, both of whom are juniors.
Smith recorded eight block assists and Wiggs had six in addition to one solo block. Their efforts helped give Florida a 14-7.5 advantage in blocking against Tennessee.
“We do look at that number, but we also look at what’s called quality touches — how many times does the ball hit our hands and what are we doing with it,” Wise said. “Our blocking was actually the weakest it’s been all season, based on [quality touches]…it was a bad day when our passing wasn’t very good to also be pretty weak blocking.”
In the assist column, the Vols recorded 64 assists compared to just 54 for the Gators.
Making matters worse was that of those 54, sophomore setter Chanel Brown and Murphy recorded 50 while the rest of the squad just had four.
“[Tennessee] definitely won the serving-passing battle,” Jaeckel said. “That’s something that we always talk about. ... They definitely were passing better than we were.”
Despite playing unevenly throughout the match, UF still managed to force a fifth set for the fourth time this season.
However, Florida has only won once in a match that went the distance, downing No. 8 Texas at the Nike Big Four Classic.
What crippled the Gators most was giving up an 11-8 lead in the fifth, which disintegrated after a quick 4-0 run by the Volunteers.
After falling behind 12-11, Florida never regained the lead.
“We expect more from a senior-laden team like ours, so that’s the biggest disappointment right now,” Wise said.
Senior setter Kelly Murphy hit a season-low .171 in Sunday’s loss to Tennessee at home.
