Alabama volleyball continued its skid, falling to the Kentucky Wildcats in four sets Sunday afternoon, leaving the team at 0-3 in its SEC lineup.
Despite losing the first two sets, Alabama was able to dominate its way into winning the third set to avoid the sweep.
The team showed significant improvement compared with its games against Mississippi State and Ole Miss; the team had fewer service errors, higher hitting percentages and overall better gameplay.
Victoria Schmer, this game’s libero, thought the improvement was drastic and showed a promising future for the team.
“I’m really proud of the growth that we showed today from our last games in the SEC,” Schmer said. “We won a set today, and that shows the resiliency of our team. I’m looking forward to getting back in the gym to prepare for our next matches. The team that showed today would have won our last games.”
Outside hitters Kendyl Reaugh and Kyla Dunaway each shone with nine kills, along with middle blocker Alyiah Wells and outside hitter Micah Gryniewicz, who had seven and six, respectively. These four kept a competitive atmosphere for the Wildcats, who ran all over the court for the balls Alabama was relentlessly placing.
This game had a .188 hitting percentage, which again shows improvement from Alabama’s last game against Mississippi State, where the hitting percentage was a mere .145.
Gryniewicz attributes this improvement to the team’s improved game perception and how the team continues to be aggressive.
“We brought a lot of aggressiveness in our offensive system,” Gryniewicz said. “We’ve also done a better job with our decision-making. I feel like we’ve done a really good job dishing the ball out, so we’ve definitely raised our IQ levels in terms of offense.”
Even though Alabama kept Kentucky on its toes, Kentucky did the same to Alabama. The Crimson Tide’s defense worked hard this game, with a total of 46 digs, most of which came from setter Callie Kieffer, defensive specialist Sydney Gholson and Reaugh.
Although the Alabama defense worked hard to ensure the ball got back over the net, they had trouble getting it to the setter, resulting in wild hits and serving runs from Kentucky. Alabama head coach Rashinda Reed says this is the area where she has seen some of the most improvement but also where more needs to be made.
“We did better with passing, but only in moments,” Reed said. “With passing, we need to understand that we’ve got to get that ball up. There’s too many options available to not be able to utilize them.”
Serving continues to improve from game to game; with seven service aces and only four service errors. This is in stark contrast to last weekend’s stats of three service aces and ten service errors against Mississippi State.
The Crimson Tide will need to focus on the improvements they made Sunday to rebound from this unfortunate loss come Wednesday at 7 p.m. CT in Foster Auditorium against the Tennessee Volunteers.
