After a week’s delay, Tennessee is finally about to hit the court for the spring portion of the 2020 season when they take on Missouri here in Knoxville.

Tennessee is 5-10 all-time vs Missouri. MU has a 4-3 edge in matches played in Knoxville.

Missouri is #16 in the Coaches Poll. The Lady Vols are 1-3 against ranked opponents this season. In the rally-scoring era, UT has won about a third of their matches against top 25 teams (33 wins in 104 attempts).

Tennessee is 2-4 all-time against ranked Missouri squads. In five of those previous six meetings, the Tigers were ranked in the #20s. The only other time UT faced a Mizzou team ranked higher than 20th, they pulled off the upset (2005).

Like the Lady Vols, Missouri had their matches last week cancelled due to COVID issues on the opposing team. Unlike the Lady Vols, Missouri has already played two games in 2021.

One of the records I keep so I can post it when it’s relevant is gaps between home matches. The record for most days between home matches in a single season was 27, set in 2012 and 2016. If we count this season, then that record has been completely smashed! It will have been 97 days since the last home match back on November 7th when the team sets foot on the court at Thompson-Boling Arena tomorrow!

LONGEST WAIT FOR A UT REGULAR SEASON HOME MATCH
2020	97 days	(November 7 to February 12)
2016	27 days	(August 27 to September 23)
2012	27 days	(August 25 to September 21)
2009	26 days	(August 30 to September 25)
2015	24 days	(September 8 to October 2)

Tennessee has never swept the Tigers.

UT’s Emily Merrick and MU’s Kaylee Cox played together on Flower Mound High School’s 2018 Texas state championship team.

Missouri’s assistant coach Molly Taylor and volunteer assistant coach Alyssa Munlyn played against the Lady Vols during their college careers.

Tennessee and Missouri both have a married coaching combo. Eve Rackham and Gavin Watt here and Joshua Taylor and Molly Taylor in Columbia.

As a refresher after the long break, here are some statistical highs and lows from the first half of the season:

HIGHS AND LOWS IN 2020
	TENNESSEE	OPPONENT
KILLS	HIGH: 63 (vs UGA) LOW: 31 (vs UK)	HIGH: 59 (vs UGA) LOW: 25 (vs AU)
HITTING %	HIGH: .308 (vs AU) LOW: .101 (vs UK)	HIGH: .451 (vs UK) LOW: .116 (vs SC)
ASSISTS	HIGH: 58 (vs UGA) LOW: 30 (vs UK)	HIGH: 56 (vs UK) LOW: 25 (vs AU)
ACES	HIGH: 7 (vs AU) LOW: 1 (vs UK)	HIGH: 6 (vs UGA) LOW: 0 (vs UGA, AU)
DIGS	HIGH: 86 (vs UGA) LOW: 35 (vs UK)	HIGH: 78 (vs UGA) LOW: 30 (vs AU)
BLOCKS	HIGH: 12 (vs UGA, UGA, SC) LOW: 2 (vs UK)	HIGH: 10 (vs SC) LOW: 4 (vs AU)
POINTS	HIGH: 77 (vs UGA) LOW: 34 (vs UK)	HIGH: 74 (vs UGA) LOW: 32 (vs AU)

Tickets for the match can be purchased online here. Important match information relating to COVID precautions should be read in advance of attending here. There are a couple of promotions this week, including trivia questions which will require an app download and “VOL-entine’s Day” treats. More info on those can be found here.

Knoxville TN
#16 MISSOURI
February 12th, 6:30pm ET	Stats | Video
February 13th, 6:30pm ET	Stats | Video

There are a couple of site notes I also want to mention. First of all, to differentiate these spring matches from the fall matches coming later this year, I am going to continue to call this the “2020 season”. I could say the “2020-21 season” but I prefer the former! And secondly, because of this split season there may be some issues with the site. When I wrote the code that parses the team’s stats and displays them, I made some assumptions. One of the biggest was that whatever date a match was played on, the year in that date would match the season. So a game played on October 13, 2019 would automatically be assumed to be part of the 2019 season. Obviously that was a safe assumption since every NCAA match ever played has followed that format! But, like so many things, COVID has thrown a wrench in the works. These spring 2021 matches are part of the 2020 season, but the site will not understand that! So you may notice some hiccups in the stats and roster pages until I can get a fix in place.