It took nearly two hours for the Alabama volleyball team’s 10-match winning streak to come to an end. After crushing No. 18 Kentucky in the opening set 25-15, Alabama lost the next three sets (19-25, 19-25, 23-25) to start conference play 0-1.
Despite the loss, the team was not too disappointed in its performance against a ranked opponent.
“I thought we did really well,” freshman Brittany Thomas said. “This was one of the second matches that really made us focus to play as a team, the first one being the match against Clemson. It was just a really strong team effort, and we knew we couldn’t dissolve into individuals playing their own game. Everyone had to come together and work together to make this one happen.”
The team notched 54 kills on the match, which put it even with Kentucky. Four members of the Crimson Tide put up double digit kills: Thomas, Andrea McQuaid, Krystal Rivers and Laura Steiner. Thomas led the team in kills with 14 and earned a double-double with 10 digs.
“[She is] a kid that’s getting better every week,” head coach Ed Allen said. “She probably competes better than she practices on a regular basis, and that’s not to slight how she comes to practice. But she’s a kid that turns it on when it matters and plays with a lot of intensity and a lot of desire. We were really pleased with her performance out of serve-receive, pleased with how she defensively reacted to some situations and ultimately pleased with how she led us in kills.”
Overall, the team put up .211 hitting percentage after finishing the first set at .484. In the first set, Alabama had two attacking errors. At the end of the match, it had a total of 27 errors, 13 more than Kentucky.
“I didn’t think communication was an issue,” Allen said. “I think any time that you’re playing aggressively and you’ve got six people in a 30-by-30 area, you’re going to make contact with each other, especially if they’re playing defense as aggressively as we expect. We don’t feel communication or defense lost the match by any stretch. Our ball control on serve-receive was less than ideal, and we’d like to see that improve. And it’s an area that we didn’t expect to have difficulty in, as we think it’s one of the strengths that we have.”
Alabama doesn’t have much time to work before it faces its next SEC opponent. The team leaves Tuesday for a Wednesday night match against Auburn.
“We’ll practice tomorrow,” setter Sierra Wilson said. “We have one practice before Auburn, so we’re probably going to focus on our passing and transition plays and probably focus on defending the setter a little bit more. We had some issues with that this game.”
