Tennessee volleyball had not needed a fifth set until it hit the road for its most recent trip.
But fast forward three weeks, and the Lady Vols have a trifecta of experience in the winner-take-all finale, coming out on both sides of the scoreboard. Wednesday’s conference contest was the second of which ended in a loss.
“Just the margins are super small in this conference, everybody’s good, and so you might find yourself in the fifth quite often,” head coach Eve Rackham Watt said.
A team .246 hit percentage and 10 service errors set the tone for the night. It was back-end miscues that put the dagger in the Lady Vols’ first home loss of the season.
They opened the match strongly, claiming a 25-19 win with a .382 hitting percentage. Tennessee was credited with four errors to go with 17 kills while going 15-for-19 on sideouts.
And then the second set began the sputtering for the home team. Florida responded by winning 19-of-23 sideouts, hitting efficiently with three errors over 46 total attacks to take a narrow two-point win to even up the match.
But the miscues snowballed on Rackham Watt’s squad in the third set. Nine more errors compiled, and the Lady Vols won just nine of 24 sideouts in a third-set route by Florida, 25-15. The .077 hitting percentage was the lowest, by a wide margin, by either team on the night.
Though Tennessee salvaged the match with a compelling fourth-set win, the errors were too much to overcome in a shortened finale. Seven errors arose from the home team, including the final two points, to drop the game.
“You look across the league, you’re going to see a lot of five-set matches,” Rackham Watt said. “You know, again, because we’re playing other good opponents, and as the season goes on, people have got more film, more scouting, and so the margins get smaller and smaller.
“I think we played well, but not well enough to win in the fifth set, just way too many attacking errors.”
It was a similar occurrence when the Lady Vols dropped a five-set match at No. 2 Texas. They compiled 20 errors over the course of the match, including five in the final set — failing to pull off the late upset.
Just five nights prior, in Baton Rouge, Tennessee had its first taste of five-set volleyball. The Lady Vols came out on the winning side, taking a reverse sweep to stun the Tigers on their home court. But the road trip provided a test they hadn’t seen all season.
Rackham Watt was able to proclaim further what she already knew about her squad through the road trip.
“This is a good team,” Rackham Watt said. “I think that was, I don’t know if I learned it or just kind of reconfirmed, that this is a really good team. We’ve got a high ceiling.”
With the three-match road bout over, and Food City Center back in the realm of hosting matches, Tennessee returns to the court on Sunday, Oct. 19, to face Auburn.
“It feels like we’ve been gone for a month,” Rackham Watt said. “You know, yeah, it’s good. I’m glad we’re at home on Sunday as well, but again, another tough team.”
