The Lady Vols are resilient and determined to win against No. 10 Arkansas on Friday evening. After an unfortunate loss to Kentucky (20-25, 24-26, 26-27), Tennessee has spent the week working on improving its skills.
While a loss might heavily impact a team, No. 12 Tennessee has approached losing as a learning experience.
The Lady Vols have encountered two losses this season. Their first was against No. 1 Wisconsin, where the Lady Vols battled the Badgers to five sets, and their second was against No. 20 Kentucky, where Tennessee looked to be having an off day.
“I think our group is resilient,” head coach Eve Rackham Watt said. “I think everybody is aware we didn’t have our best match against Kentucky, and so I thought we came into practice on Tuesday and were really motivated and excited to be back in the gym. I think everybody felt like we got exposed in some areas, which is OK. We learned some things, and I felt like we had a great week of practice, and just from an emotional standpoint, I feel like our team has rebounded nicely.”
Overall, the Lady Vols have had a successful season going 16-2 overall and 7-1 in the SEC. Players and coaches have broken personal records, and the team has been atop the rankings for NCAA volleyball. Therefore, the loss does not intimidate Tennessee.
“I definitely think it was difficult,” Rackham Watt said about the loss. “You know, this team is really highly competitive … But it’s also one loss so it’s not going to define the season, and I think that we have an experienced group that understands that if you don’t play your best, you can get beat by a good team. So I think it’s just one day and we have to move on, and it’s still early enough in the season for this.”
Rackham Watt has emphasized the importance of focusing on playing Tennessee volleyball rather than worrying about the opponent across the net. No matter who challenges the Lady Vols, the team will work to showcase their best abilities to anyone.
All-American Morgahn Fingall exhibited this mentality after the loss against Kentucky.
“A loss is never truly a loss unless you learn from it,” Fingall said. “Honestly, it’s never as bad as it seems. I think, for our team, I’m really hoping they’ll be tough and I know that they will be and really use this next week as an opportunity to get better because our goal wasn’t for the season to beat Kentucky the second time we played them. It’s to make it far into the NCAA season. So just taking that in that bigger picture but also coming back to the daily work will be really important. And I think they’ll do just that.”
After being exposed by Kentucky, the Lady Vols took the week to improve in the areas that were weak such as serve, serve receive, blocking and middle hitter production. Rackham Watt has found positives in being exposed by the Wildcats.
“Any time you can get exposed and learn about yourself and I think we’ve been able to do it a little bit throughout the season but it never feels the same during a win … And so in the nonconference, that was the goal,” Rackham Watt said. “To play, to be able to expose some things early on. And like I said, I still think it’s early enough in the year that we can still make some adjustments and we can still continue to work on ourselves and not feel like we’re running out of time.”
The Lady Vols will have the opportunity to apply their hard work against Arkansas on Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET.
