Florida’s volleyball team is nearing the end of its most dominant month in years.
Since losing in five sets to Tennessee on Sept. 25, Florida has been the hottest team in the country, winning eight consecutive games in straight sets against Southeastern Conference competition.
“We can put a lot of credit to the high-octane offense that we’re playing,” UF coach Mary Wise said. “We have the rhythm between the setters and the hitters.”
The No. 13 Gators’ current run of sweeps is their best since 2009, and another straight-set victory would make it their lengthiest since 2007.
During the stretch, Florida’s offense has gotten even better at the areas in which it was already excelling and rounded out some other aspects that needed work.
“One of the great indicators in our sport is what is the hitting percentage that a team can accumulate,” Wise said. “Right now, ours is pretty good.”
Florida is hitting .353 during the winning streak, improving its conference-leading season hitting clip to .314. Tennessee is second in the SEC with a .258 mark. As of Oct. 16, Florida was second in the nation in hitting efficiency.
Three of the SEC’s top 10 hitting percentages belong to UF players. Junior middle blocker Betsy Smith would lead the league with a .426 clip if she averaged three attacks per set instead of 2.82.
The Gators’ biggest concern heading into October was transitioning offense from the backcourt to the frontcourt.
Young back-row players like Taylor Unroe and Madison Monserez struggled at times early in the season to make digs that led smoothly into quality sets and kills.
“That’s where we’ve really improved from the last time we played Kentucky and Tennessee,“ Wise said. “We’ve been a much better serve-reception team, so teams haven’t been able to get on a roll.”
Passing often gets overlooked because hitters are judged solely on attack numbers, while people turn to dig totals to discuss defensive specialists. However, the Gators’ offense has been much more fluent since their last loss.
Another positive is serving. Florida is a high-risk serving team, featuring a number of jump-servers who sacrifice a higher level of errors to be the SEC’s runaway leader in service aces. The Gators have six more service aces than any other team in their conference despite playing at least 10 fewer sets than the other squads.
“When that is working for us, it allows us to make good runs on points,” Wise said. “Quality serving helps with quality blocking and that leads to what we talked about in terms of transition defense.”
