The Lady Vols closed out a four-game homestand with two matchups against SEC opponents in Georgia and South Carolina.
After defeating the Bulldogs earlier in the week, the Lady Vols handled business against the Gamecocks, sweeping a 3-0 win on Friday night before taking off for a three-game road stretch.
Despite jumping ahead to an early set one lead of 12-7, the Lady Vols saw the advantage disappear just as quickly with the Gamecocks posting a 9-1 run in the later stages of the opening round in front of the home crowd.
“Tremendous crowd, tremendous crowd support,” Lady Vols head coach Eve Rackham Watt said. “I can’t say enough about what our fans have done for us this year. They’ve been unbelievable. I truly believe they’re a part of us winning these matches.”
The run put South Carolina ahead of the Lady Vols 16-13, but the team had a response. Led by Hayden Kubik, who tallied three kills in the final few stages, she was also joined by Chelsea Sutton and Starr Williams, who had big kills of their own.
Kubik and Sutton finished the first set with the final touches, pushing the Lady Vols ahead early with a 25-23 set one win.
With the early one-set advantage, the Lady Vols were going to need more consistency compared to the first set to sit down the Gamecocks.
“Everybody that we play is going to be good,” Rackham Watt said. “It’s going to be a battle every single night; that was a really good South Carolina team.”
An interesting note: former Lady Vol Emily Beeker, who transferred as a graduate student last season to South Carolina, received the starting nod on the other side and put together quite a homecoming performance.
Beeker’s first set finished tied for a team-high of five kills. Most notably, she earned those five kills on ten attempts, good for a .500 hitting percentage.
Despite Beeker’s hot start, the Lady Vols kept improving as the game moved forward. Set two started with a 12-6 Lady Vols lead. For every Gamecock point, it seemed the team had a response.
The largest run the Gamecocks went on the entire second set was two different instances where they scored back-to-back set points. Other than that, the Lady Vols handled the Gamecocks’ pressure much better compared to the opening round.
“I think this team believes in themselves, they believe in each other,” Rackham Watt said. “It’s not my favorite thing, to be down in sets, but we’ve talked about it, and volleyball is such a sport of momentum, you’ll see a team go up three and down four, it’s pretty common, but I’m really proud of our way to find a way to just fight back.”
The Lady Vols finished set two, winning 25-16, finished by a Paityn Chapman kill.
After winning the first two sets of the game, the Lady Vols were once again firmly in the driver’s seat.
Kubik and Sutton each delivered four more kills in set two of action. Through the first two sets, Kubik led the match with ten total kills. She had a block to go with it. Zoe Humphrey was added to the defense with eight blocks through two sets.
The Lady Vols kept up the pace entering the third set, never giving the Gamecocks a chance to settle during the round.They claimed the final set 25-17, pushing the Lady Vols ahead to their 10th straight win to close out the homestand.
The team gets a week off before taking on LSU on Oct. 3 in Baton Rouge, where the Lady Vols’ win streak will be put to the test against the gauntlet of the SEC.
“Once you get into conference play, you’re not making a ton of changes, you’re really just kind of trying to find your tune and work through some details,” Rackham Watt said. “Film study and really address things that are chronic, not the minor things.”
