Tennessee gets number 9 in a row with a 3-0 win vs the Rebels (25-17, 25-17, 25-18). Much more when I get back from Oxford!

UPDATE: Just before midnight and I’m finally home! That’s a long drive but it’s a lot more bearable after a win! Check out UT’s site for the story and stats.

The Lady Vols won a hard fought match against Arkansas tonight 3-0 (29-27, 31-29, 25-18). This is the eighth win in a row for the team, and the fifth match in a row won in three sets.

Four players had double digit kills: Milan Clarke with 15, Nikki Fowler with 13, Mindy Flynn and Farren Powe with 11 each. Four players (with at least 5 attacks) hit over .300: Powe hit .529 (11-2-17), Alyssa Hilby hit .500 (3-0-6), Clarke hit .375 (15-3-32), and Flynn hit .360 (11-2-25). Powe has hit over .500 in four straight matches. Chloe Goldman had 25 digs, which ties her second best match of the season. Kelsey Mahoney had 28 assisits, and Michaela Hanakova had 21. The team had 56 total assists — easily the season high for a three set match. Fowler led in blocks with 4; Powe had 3.

Apologies for my continued absence! I had hoped to be free of the bulk of work that my other website takes by now. But I’m still swamped! I hope to catch up with everything, including this site, during the weekend.

Tennessee’s Nikki Fowler was named to the 2008 College Sports Information Directors of America/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District IV first team it was announced today. CoSIDA’s Academic All-America program recognizes the nation’s premier college scholar-athletes for their ability to achieve excellence on the playing field and in the classroom. By being named to the first-team, Fowler is now eligible for consideration for Academic All-America status. Fowler is a business major with a 3.86 GPA. Congratulations Nikki! More info: full list (PDF), Tennessee’s story

Just a heads up that I won’t be posting the weekly recap or upcoming notes until probably Thursday. I run another website about presidential elections. That site takes all my free time during the run up to election day. By the time it’s all done though I’ll be so burned out on politics that I’ll be longing to spend time back here! See you in a few days!

Congratulations to Farren Powe for being named the SEC Offensive Player of the Week for the first time in her career!

“Hit a team-high .593 clip with 18 kills and two errors in 27 swings as UT extended its current winning streak to a season-long seven matches by picking up wins over Georgia and LSU. Also topped the team in blocks with 11 blocks (one solo, 10 assists), in addition to collecting three digs, an assist and an ace. Set a career high with a stellar .692 hitting percentage in UT’s win over Georgia and she took over sole possession of first place on the SEC hitting percentage chart with a .417 attack average during league play.”

Farren was also named Lady Vol Athlete of the Week.

The Lady Vols win their 17th of the season, their 10th in SEC play, and their 7th in a row in a 3-0 sweep of LSU (25-22, 25-11, 25-23). Much more later!

UPDATE: Story and stats from Tennessee and LSU.

Unless you want to be early to the match tomorrow, don’t forget to set your clocks back tonight for daylight savings time!

Tennessee ended the six match win streak Georgia had built coming into tonight, defeating the Bulldogs 3-0 (25-15, 25-12, 25-16) and claiming their own six match win streak. Clarke had 11 kills, Fowler and Marshall had 7 each and both added in 9 digs as well. Powe had a big night hitting too but I can’t remember her numbers. I’ll just wait for the box score to post more! Check back later.

UPDATE: Here’s that box score and story from Tennessee, and also one from Georgia. The official Lady Vol site has a post-game analysis audio clip with Coach Patrick (located on the right side of the page under “Tennessee All-Access”).

Let’s start all over! Farren Powe had a career night hitting .692 (10-1-13). Milan Clarke led in kills with 12, hitting .429. Nikki Fowler and Kylie Marshall had 7 kills and 9 blocks each. Five players had multiple blocks: Powe with 5, Mindy Flynn, Alyssa Hilby, and Fowler with three each, and Marshall with 2. Chloe Goldman had 18 digs. Michaela Hanakova had 18 assists. Kelsey Mahoney had 17. Tennessee out hit Georgia .391 to .029.

Freshman setter Kelsey Mahoney has a video interview over at the official Lady Vol site. It’s on the right side of the page under “Tennessee All-Access”.

It’s hard to believe we’re down to just four home matches left this season! And two of them get played this weekend. On Halloween night, the Lady Vols will try to put a scare into the Georgia Bulldogs. Kids 12 and under in costume will be admitted free, and UT student-athletes will be signing autographs before the match. On Sunday, LSU comes to town.

• The bad news: no candy. The good news: Tennessee is 12-8-2 on Halloween! Things are a little more muddled when looking at the specifics of this year’s match. The Lady Vols are 3-3 at home and 1-1 vs Georgia in matches played on October 31st.

• With a win on Friday, Tennessee would have a 6 match winning streak, tying the fifth longest streak since Rob Patrick took over as coach in 1997. In late 2004, the Lady Vols won 14 in a row. In early and mid 2004, the team twice won 9 in a row. They matched that number again in 2005. In 2000, Tennessee won 6 in a row.

• With Florida’s recent loss to Georgia, the Bulldogs now have the longest current winning streak in the SEC at 6 matches. Tennessee and Kentucky are second with 5 wins in a row.

• Tennessee has won 10 of the last 11 matches against Georgia and hasn’t lost at home to them since 2001.

• If LSU wins their Friday match at Kentucky, they will be going for program win #800 vs Tennessee.

• Last season LSU senior libero Elena Martinez and Tennessee junior libero Chloe Goldman were easily the top two players at their position in the conference. And so they are again this season. Martinez is 50th in the nation with 4.56 digs per set, while Goldman is 52nd with 4.52. Just counting SEC matches Goldman gets the slight edge with 4.85 to 4.84. Both players reached 1,000 career digs this season. Combined, the two of them have won more than half of the SEC Defensive Player of the Week awards this season — Martinez three times, Goldman twice, other players four times. When they met earlier this season Martinez had 22 digs to Goldman’s 17. However, Goldman did better on serve receive with no errors compared to 3 for Martinez.

• LSU is ranked 44th in the country in blocks per set. The Lady Vols are right there with them ranking 48th. LSU’s top blocker is Brittnee Cooper, 22nd in the country with 1.30 blocks per set. Tennessee’s Alyssa Hilby is not far behind at 52nd with 1.21.

• Tennessee has lost 8 of the last 11 matches with LSU.

• Georgia (14-9, 7-5)
Tennessee leads the all time series 35-23
Tennessee won earlier this season 3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-19)
Game time is Fri, October 31st at 7:00pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video
UGA match notes

• LSU (12-7, 7-5)
Tennessee leads the all time series 16-29
Tennessee lost earlier this season 3-1 (22-25, 25-18, 25-20, 25-23)
Game time is Sun, November 2nd at 1:30pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video

	UT	UGA	LSU
Matches / Sets	23 / 84	23 / 85	19 / 71
Kills Errors / Total Attacks Kills per set Hitting Percentage	1077 413 / 2869 12.8 .231	1067 431 / 2802 12.6 .227	922 415 / 2438 13.0 .208
Assists Assists per set	1002 11.9	977 11.5	849 12.0
Service Aces Aces per set	102 1.2	113 1.3	89 1.3
Digs Digs per set	1260 15.0	1133 13.3	964 13.6
Solo Blocks / Assists Blocks per set	36 / 335 2.4	19 / 320 2.1	43 / 263 2.5

The Lady Vols are one of the top overall teams statistically in SEC play so far this season.

• Hitting percentage: 3rd
• Kills: 2nd
• Blocks: 3rd
• Aces: 5th
• Digs: 1st
• Assists: 1st

If you average those individual ranks to get an overall rank, Tennessee comes out on top of the conference:

• Tennessee: 2.5 (3 H%, 2 K, 3 B, 5 SA, 1 D, 1 A)
• Kentucky: 2.7 (2 H%, 3 K, 1 B, 1 SA, 5 D, 4 A)
• Florida: 3.2 (1 H%, 1 K, 5 B, 4 SA, 6 D, 2 A)

After three days of cold medicine induced grogginess, I’m finally feeling pretty good — except for my voice which is only half there! So it’s time to get caught up. I’m going to pass on the weekend recap, update the stats page, and get to work on the notes for this weekend. Hopefully all should be done by tomorrow.

Well I am obviously not on my way to Starkville right now as planned! I woke up this morning with a pretty bad cold. I am going to take some Nyquil and crash so there may not be any updates after todays match. I think the MSU website will have live score and stats.

The Lady Vols defeated Alabama 3-0 (25-22, 25-22, 25-22). Chloe Goldman had 17 digs, making her only the 9th player in Tennessee history to record more than 1,000 career digs. Mindy Flynn led the offense with 12 kills and a .391 hitting percentage. Nikki Fowler and Milan Clarke had 8 kills each. And Farren Powe had 6 while hitting .357. Kylie Marshall added in 11 digs. Kelsey Mahoney had 22 assists while Michaela Hanakova had 16.

UPDATE: Tennessee and Alabama have the story and stats.