DeLeye, No. 13 Kentucky Build Momentum as the Cats Begin SEC Play

Through the first twelve matches of the season, the No. 13 Kentucky volleyball team found itself in unfamiliar territory. After taking a 2-0 lead in the match in their Southeastern Conference opener, they watched as the Auburn Tigers stormed back to win the game in five sets and hand the Cats their fourth-consecutive loss. In total, Kentucky was boasting a 6-6 record without a single Top 25 victory.

To be fair, part of that was because they had played one of the hardest schedules in the country. Five of the Cats’ first eleven games had been played against teams ranked in the Top 10. And to Kentucky’s credit, they played every one of them tough, not allowing a single one of those teams to win by a sweep. 

To make matters worse, the injury bug was decimating the Cats’ roster. Before the season began, freshman outside hitter Hannah Benjamin was sidelined after tearing her ACL in practice. Just before Kentucky took the court against No. 7 Purdue, freshman Asia Thigpen, who was seeing regular action as a starter, tweaked her knee and couldn’t go. And, most recently, senior outside hitter Erin Lamb was sidelined with a non-volleyball injury just before the match against Auburn.

All that to say, Kentucky had shown flashes throughout the season of a team that could be great, but things were looking bleak to begin conference play.

And the Cats’ next match? None other than conference rival No. 15 Florida down in Gainesville. If Kentucky wanted to stop the negative momentum and begin putting together a resume worthy of a good seed in the NCAA Tournament, it was going to have to start by beating the Gators. 

That would be a tall task, though, as Florida returned most of their starters from last year’s team. But as they have for much of her young career, Kentucky turned to sophomore Brooklyn DeLeye to shoulder the offensive load with so many of the Cats’ other hitters being forced to watch from the bench.

As she has every time her name has been called, she delivered. And then some.

Against Florida, DeLeye put together one of the most impressive matches of her Wildcat career, finding the floor with 24 kills on a sweltering .370 clip. Through 54 total swings, she compiled only 4 hitting errors and in the fourth and final set totaled ten kills by herself. As if that wasn’t enough, she also picked up eight digs, three blocks, and a pair of service aces, one of which she found the court with on match point to give the Cats their first ranked win of the season.

At least for the moment, DeLeye and company had righted the ship. But Wednesday’s opponent, Oklahoma, wasn’t going to make things any easier for Kentucky. Just six days prior to Wednesday’s match against the Cats, the Sooners had taken that same Florida team to five sets before falling in a heartbreaker to the Gators. On Sunday, however, Oklahoma picked up a ranked win of its own as the Sooners downed No. 20 Tennessee in just four sets. Add to that the fact that Oklahoma ranked second in the SEC and 20^th nationally in blocks per set, and it was clear to see that Kentucky would need to bring the same intensity they had against the Gators if they wanted to leave Memorial with a win Wednesday night.

Luckily for Kentucky fans, the Cats were up to the challenge once again. 

After winning the first set, Oklahoma won sets two and three by a score of 25-23 thanks to some stellar blocking at the net. But Kentucky wasn’t going down that easily. Off the arm of DeLeye, the Cats took set four 25-18 to force a decisive fifth set. And with the score tied at 9 late in set five, DeLeye took over. The sophomore scored Kentucky’s final six points of the match as she and the rest of the Wildcats won the set 15-13 and the match 3-2.

DeLeye finished with a match-high 25 kills on a .385 clip to go along with ten digs, good for her fifth double-double of the season. 

To be fair, though, it wasn’t just DeLeye who led the Cats to victory against the Sooners. In her first year at libero, fellow sophomore Molly Tuozzo continued to impress as she picked up a career high 20 digs on the evening. Tuozzo also finished with seven assists and four aces, three of which she picked up consecutively to give Kentucky the win in set four. 

With the win, Kentucky improved to 8-6 on the season and 2-1 in the SEC. The road isn’t getting any easier, especially as the Cats prepare to take on Texas in just over a week’s time. But Kentucky seems to be slowly finding some rhythm in their offense as redshirt freshmen Jordyn Dailey and Brooke Bultema settle into their roles and as Megan Wilson gets more comfortable on the right pin. They still desperately need to get healthy, but with Brooklyn DeLeye on their side of the net, the Cats don’t seem to be far from a breakthrough and, hopefully, an eighth-straight SEC Championship.