The Tennessee Lady Volunteer volleyball team had won 11 of their last 12 home openers, but was unable to secure a victory in its first match inside Thompson-Boling Arena Thursday against Austin Peay.
The in-state rival Governors swept the Lady Vols three sets to none (25-18, 25-17, 25-13).
After running out to a 5-0 lead in the first set, the Lady Vols did not have another lead in the match until the third set.Head coach Rob Patrick was dismayed by the team’s loss.
“I’m disappointed in how we played,” Patrick said. “We started off really strong doing nothing special and just playing our game. The story of the match was we could not sustain momentum. Whenever we created any momentum we either had a net error, we missed a serve, or we had overpasses and eventually Austin Peay got some momentum and we weren’t able to stop them. We couldn’t sustain any momentum in the match and volleyball is a huge momentum game.Patrick was at a loss to understand why his team played without passion in their home-opening game.”I wish I knew,” Patrick said.
“We had great practices this week. We really did some good things last weekend (at Coastal Carolina) in the matches that we played. So, I was actually feeling really good about where we were at and how we were playing. I’m going to have to look at the film to see what happened.I don’t know if they got nervous playing in front of the home crowd. I know they wanted to play well, but to be honest I don’t know why we were not able to control the ball and Austin Peay did.”
Patrick contributed the team’s struggles with inconsistency to over-passing on the offensive side of the ball.
“We haven’t overpassed that many balls all year and obviously Austin Peay took advantage of that,” Patrick said. “Our passing broke down, we got unorganized a little bit and we got a little tight because of it and that’s the worst thing we can do.”
Freshman Kanisha Jimenez led the team with 13 kills and a 0.414 hitting percentage.She stressed the importance of moving on from last night’s loss.
“We just have to focus and have more passion on the court and more energy,” said Jimenez. “We need to go out there and play Tennessee Volleyball. We just have to mentally forget about all the games that we lost including today and go out tomorrow and crush the other teams.”
Tennessee is hosting the DISH Lady Vol Classic this weekend and will have a quick turnaround before their next match.
“We’ll get ready,” Patrick said. “It’s really about our state of mind and our focus going in. We’re going to have to just take care of being organized. We have to be able to play better than that.”
The Lady Vols will play another in-state rival when they take on the Memphis Tigers Friday at 7 p.m.
