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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Match Notes 2013: UC Invitational
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We’re just two days away from the start of the 2013 season! The Lady Vols will face Morehead State, Cincinnati, and Butler at the UC Invitational in Cincinnati OH.

  • Since 1978, the Lady Vols are 27-8 in season opening matches. In the opening week of the season the team is 75-31. Under Coach Rob Patrick the team is 12-4 in season opening matches and 41-7 in the opening week of the season.
  • August matches are a relatively new thing for Tennessee. Prior to the turn of the century the team had only played seven matches before September. Since 2001, they’ve played them every year but one. UT is 32-5 in August.
  • Tennessee is 4-2-2 all-time vs Morehead State. The Lady Vols have won the last four in a row, with the most recent meeting occurring in 1994.
  • Last season the Eagles rattled off a national-best 24 straight wins and finished the season 26-7. They were the OVC Champions with a 16-0 record.
  • Tennessee is 5-3 all-time vs Cincinnati. The teams have met only twice in the past quarter-century, with the Lady Vols winning the previous meeting last year.
  • Last season the Bearcats went 12-20 and finished 5th in the Big East at 9-6.
  • Tennessee is 2-0 all-time vs Butler. The last meetings were in 1986 and 1992.
  • Last season the Bulldogs were 17-12 overall. They finished 6th at 7-7 in their only season in the Atlantic 10 Conference.
  • The UC Invitational will be the third tournament the team has played in Ohio in the past five years. Both previous times, they lost their first match before winning the next two.
  • Molly Alvey is very familiar with the Lady Vols having coached against them every year since 2005: as the assistant and then associate head coach at Mississippi from 2005-2009, two seasons as head coach at Houston from 2010-2011, and the past two years as head coach of Cincinnati.
  • While Tennessee spoiled fans the past four years by opening the season in Knoxville, before that opening on the road was the norm. Coach Patrick didn’t have a season debut before the home crowd until his 10th year. With this trip to Cincinnati, he’s taken his teams out of town to start the season twelve times during his seventeen years at the helm, compiling an 8-3 record. Going further back, over the past 22 years the Lady Vols have opened on the road all but five times.
  • Since 2001, UT is 5-0 vs the Ohio Valley Conference. The Big East Conference split in two during the offseason. Cincinnati is with the half that renamed themselves the American Athletic Conference. Butler was just invited to join the half that retained the Big East name. UT is 21-3 vs the Big East since 2001.
  • Butler has a couple of East Tennessee connections. Bulldog sophomore Nicole Sumida and Lady Vol junior Kalyn Helton both hail from Hixson TN where they both were members of the Choo Choo City Volleyball Club. And when the bridge is open, turn right off UT’s main thoroughfare Cumberland Avenue onto Henley Street, drive eleven miles, turn left on Boyd Creek Highway and you’re at Seymour High School, Butler senior Morgan Peterson’s alma mater.

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