• Tennessee has one of their easier road trip weekends as the two schools they travel to, Alabama and Mississippi State, are only 80 miles apart from each other.

• After defeating ETSU, Mississippi, and Arkansas last week, Tennessee is on a three match winning streak. With a win vs Alabama on Friday they can extend that to their longest winning streak of the season so far. If they add another win on Sunday vs Mississippi State they’d have their longest winning streak since September 2006.

• Tennessee is 16-1 vs MSU since 1997.

• Tennessee’s win vs the Tide earlier this year was their first in their last six tries.

• Alabama and Mississippi State are the only two SEC teams currently ranked in the top 50 in the nation in aces per set. Alabama ranks 17th with 1.79 while MSU is 43rd with 1.57. Alabama sophomore Mary Catherine Aune has 34 aces this season. Her 0.60 aces per set makes her the fourth best in the nation. The good news is the Lady Vols rank 2nd in the conference in serve reception errors per set.

• Alabama (10-8, 3-6)
Tennessee leads the all time series 24-12
Tennessee won earlier this season 3-1 (25-17, 25-17, 24-26, 25-18)
Game time is Fri, October 24th at 7:00pm CT
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video

• Mississippi State (6-14, 1-8)
Tennessee leads the all time series 34-7
Tennessee won earlier this season 3-0 (25-20, 25-13, 25-14)
Game time is Sun, October 26th at 1:30pm CT
Follow the match with live score and stats
MSU match notes (PDF)

	Tenn.	Ala.	Miss. St.
Matches / Games	21 / 78	18 / 67	20 / 72
Kills Errors / Total Attacks Kills per game Hitting Percentage	998 392 / 2676 12.8 .226	829 309 / 2257 12.4 .230	769 442 / 2309 10.7 .142
Assists Assists per game	926 11.9	759 11.3	693 9.6
Service Aces Aces per game	95 1.2	120 1.8	113 1.6
Digs Digs per game	1167 15.0	946 14.1	837 11.6
Solo Blocks / Assists Blocks per game	32 / 309 2.4	53 / 163 2.0	38 / 193 1.9

UPDATE: Tennessee and Alabama match notes are now online.

I know I’m not supposed to post pictures from the matches anymore, but I’m going to do it this one time anyway! Hopefully I won’t get in trouble. This picture is from the Arkansas match that I attended with my daughter this past Sunday.

CLICK TO VIEW PICTURE

Congratulations to Kelsey Mahoney for winning her first SEC Freshman of the Week award and to Nikki Folwer for winning another SEC Offensive Player of the Week award!

Mahoney: “Helped lead the UT offense to a 3-0 record as part of a 6-2 offense, she paced the Lady Vol attack to a .344 hitting percentage and led the team with 68 assists, good for 6.80 assists per set average. Mahoney also recorded 18 digs (1.80 per set), an ace and a block in three matches. She tallied 13 assists against ETSU, then registered 21 against Ole Miss to pace UT’s attack to a .374 average. Also against Ole Miss, she had 11 digs to record her fourth double-double of the season. Mahoney finished the weekend with her best effort of the season, notching a career-high and the highest assist total of the season by a Lady Vol with 34 in the win against Arkansas.”

Fowler: “Was UT’s top offensive weapon this past week, leading the Lady Vols to a 3-0 record with victories over ETSU, Ole Miss and Arkansas. Led UT with 44 kills, 4.40 kps, 91 total attacks, 49 points and 4.90 pps to hit .352 for the week. Also had 21 digs, four blocks and three aces and collected just one receptions error in a team-high 52 attempts (.981). She notched a career high against the Rebels with a .480 hitting percentage (14-2-25) and hit .350 against ETSU (10-3-20) and .283 (20-7-46) against the Razorbacks.”

Tennessee is on a three match winning streak after defeating ETSU, Mississippi, and Arkansas this past week. Nikki Fowler got her 17th career double double while Kelsey Mahoney got her 4th. Five players on the Lady Vols roster matched or exceeded career highs.

• Tennessee is 28-5 all time vs ETSU
• Tennessee is 32-6 all time vs Mississippi
• Tennessee is 9-14 all time vs Arkansas

• Milan Clarke hit an amazing .813 against ETSU. She had 13 kills on 16 attempts with no errors! How rare is that? In the past seven seasons (which is as far back as I have data) no other player has hit above .800 when making double digit attack attempts. Only four players have hit .700 or better with at least 10 attempts: Kristen Andre .765 (13-0-17) vs ETSU in 2003; Heather Harrington .733 (11-0-15) vs Auburn in 2004; Michelle Piantadosi .722 (14-1-18) vs UT-Martin in 2004; and Mindy Flynn .700 (8-1-10) vs Indiana in 2007. Even if you lower the threshold to more than five attempts that only adds in three more players that have hit at least .700 in that time: Sarah Blum .750 (6-0-8) vs Kentucky in 2004; Julie Knytych .833 (5-0-6) vs Mississippi in 2006; and Kylie Marshall .833 (5-0-6) vs Georgia in 2006.

• Nikki Fowler got her 17th double-double in the 50th match of her career. That’s one double-double about every three matches (34%). She’s had 37 matches with double digit kills (74%). And she’s had double digit digs in 22 matches (44%).

• Is it the new ball handling directive, the benefits of running the 6-2, or just better play? Maybe a little of all three, but Tennessee’s ball handling errors are at their lowest since 2004.

YEAR   BHE    GP    BHE/G
2008    41    78    0.53
2007    95   113    0.84
2006    96   119    0.81
2005    71   118    0.60
2004    53   125    0.42

• Career bests matched or exceeded this weekend
Carol Cheade: blocks
Milan Clarke: hitting percentage and blocks
Nikki Fowler: hitting percentage
Michaela Hanakova: aces and points
Kelsey Mahoney: assists

Tennessee defeats Arkansas 3-1 (25-21, 25-18, 17-25 25-21). More soon.

UPDATE: Tennessee has the story and box score online. Nikki Fowler notched a double-double with 20 kills and 11 digs. Mindy Flynn topped the .476 she hit Friday by hitting .483 (16-2-29) today. Milan Clarke hit .333 (10-3-21). Chloe Goldman had 18 digs and Kylie Marshall added 10 more. Kelsey Mahoney had 34 assists, and Michaela Hanakova had 17.

Tennessee defeated Mississippi tonight 3-0 (25-21, 25-14, 25-15). Sorry this was late tonight but I had my family at the match and didn’t want to make them wait while I posted this! I don’t think they made the high attendance mark for the season, but they did apparently set the record for most students at a match. More details coming soon.

UPDATE: The story and stats are online, from Tennessee and Mississippi. The match did set the 2008 attendance record with 703. Nikki Fowler had with 14 kills, 3 blocks, and hit .480 (14-2-25) — a career high. Mindy Flynn had 10 kills and hit .476 (10-0-21). Alyssa Hilby hit .500 (5-0-10) and had 4 blocks. Kelsey Mahoney notched a double-double with 21 assists and 10 digs. Chloe Goldman had 14 digs. Kylie Marshall added in 9 more. The Lady Vols were .374 (41-7-91) on the night — in set two they hit .414 and only had one attack error, and in set three they hit .438 with only two errors.

I was so sure that at tonight’s match we were supposed to try to set the high attendance record for Tennessee that a week or so ago I invited my family to come out with me for this game. But since then I haven’t seen any promotion of it so I assumed I was mistaken and haven’t mentioned it here. Today I checked the website again just to be sure and there was still no mention of it. Then I decided to check the Lady Vol marketing page. And there in a tiny little paragraph is the news:

“Help pack Thompson-Boling Arena with a record crowd for the Lady Vol Volleyball match on Friday, Oct. 17. Three pairs of Lady Vol Basketball season tickets will be given away during the match.”

It seems to me if you want to get high attendance you might want to actually promote the event a little more! OK, maybe there were newspaper or radio ads I didn’t notice. And I assume they mentioned it at the matches since I heard about it somewhere! (UPDATE – Apparently there have been radio ads all week!)

So come out tonight and help attempt break the Lady Vol attendance record. To get the current season high we’d need to beat the 676 people who attended the Auburn match earlier this month — that was the 12th largest home match in UT volleyball history. The all time home record would be 3,311 set in October 2005 when Tennessee defeated Georgia during Big Orange Madness.

Here are some of UT’s attendance records displayed in different ways.

All Time Top 5 Home Attendance
1. Georgia on 10/28/2005 at TBA with 3,311
2. Florida on 10/31/2003 at TBA with 1,571
3. Florida on 10/22/2004 at Stokely with 1,337
4. Kentucky on 11/10/2000 at Stokely with 907
5. Pacific on 9/22/1983 at Alumni with 900

All Time Top 5 Attendance Home or Away
1. Utah on 8/25/2007 at the Qwest Center
. . .in Omaha NE with 11,076
2. Nebraska on 8/24/2007 at the Qwest Center
. . .in Omaha NE with 10,158
3. Washington on 12/15/2005 at the Alamodome
. . .in San Antonio TX with 7,931
4. Nevada on 9/10/1999 at the Stan Sheriff Center
. . .in Honolulu HI with 7,434
5. Hawaii on 9/9/1999 at the Stan Sheriff Center
. . .in Honolulu HI with 6,272

All Time Top 5 Thompson-Boling Arena Attendance
1. Georgia on 10/28/2005 with 3,311
2. Florida on 10/31/2003 with 1,571
3. Auburn on 10/3/2008 with 676
4. Alabama on 9/21/2008 with 507
5. Kentucky on 10/1/2008 with 471

All Time Top 5 Stokely Athletics Center Attendance
1. Florida on 10/22/2004 with 1,337
2. Kentucky on 11/10/2000 with 907
3. Florida on 11/17/2006 with 806
4. Florida Atlantic on 9/4/1998 with 737
5. Florida on 10/30/2005 with 734

All Time Top 5 Alumni Gym Attendance
1. Pacific on 9/22/1983 with 900
2. Hawaii on 10/10/1984 with 798
3. Mississippi State on 10/9/1985 with 618
4. Georgia on 11/13/1992 with 577
5. Mississippi State on 9/24/1995 with 512
5. Eastern Kentucky on 11/6/1985 with 512

2008 Season Top 5 Home Attendance
1. Auburn on 10/3 with 676
2. Alabama on 9/21 with 507
3. Kentucky on 10/1 with 471
4. Illinois on 9/12 with 468
5. Mississippi State on 9/19 with 422

Tennessee finishes out the first half of its round robin with the other SEC schools this weekend, taking on Mississippi and Arkansas at home.

• The Lady Vols are 6-2 at home so far this season. Both losses came against teams currently ranked in the top 25.

• Tennessee lost both matches to Mississippi last season, but before that had won 14 in a row.

• Despite losing the match, Tennessee had a huge night statistically the last time they played Mississippi. With 19 kills, 18 digs, and 19 assists, Nikki Fowler recorded the first triple-double in UT history. Chloe Goldman got 40 digs, just 2 digs short of the all time Lady Vol record. Kylie Marshall had 26 digs. Jaye Loyd had 36 assists. It was a huge blocking night as Tennessee had 37 block assists — just 5 off the team’s single match record. Farren Powe had 12 blocks, Fowler had 8 (just missing a quadruple-double!), Leah Hinkey had 7, Milan Clarke had 6, and Marshall had 5.

• While not as big as the Mississippi match, Tennessee had another big night the last time they played Arkansas. Jaye Loyd had 56 assists. Chloe Goldman had 35 digs, the 6th best ever UT total and the #1 total for a four set match. Three other players added in 15 digs each. And three players were in double digit kills, led by Fowler with 22.

• Speaking of Loyd, Coach Patrick might want to consider getting her into the matches this weekend. Every one of her career highs has come against either Arkansas or Mississippi!

• Mississippi (8-8, 4-3)
Tennessee leads the all time series 31-6.
Tennessee lost both matches last season 3-2.
Game time is Fri, October 17th at 7:00pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video
UM match notes

• Arkansas (5-12, 2-5)
Arkansas leads the all time series 8-14.
Tennessee split the matches last season losing the first 3-2 and winning the second 3-1.
Game time is Sun, October 19th at 1:30pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video
UA match notes

	Tenn. (11-8)	Miss. (8-8)	Ark. (5-12)
Matches / Games	19 / 71	16 / 57	17 / 60
Kills Errors / Total Attacks Kills per game Hitting Percentage	898 366 / 2443 12.6 .218	700 314 / 2061 12.3 .187	704 317 / 2025 11.7 .191
Assists Assists per game	831 11.7	631 11.1	633 10.6
Service Aces Aces per game	85 1.2	70 1.2	66 1.1
Digs Digs per game	1061 14.9	848 14.9	760 12.7
Solo Blocks / Assists Blocks per game	28 / 291 2.4	36 / 144 1.9	20 / 196 2.0

Tennessee defeats ETSU 3-0 (25-14, 25-16, 25-20) in a match where a lot of non-starters got some significant game time. Much more when I get back to Knoxville in a few hours.

UPDATE: Tennessee has the story. Milan Clarke hit an incredible .812 (13-0-16) and had 2 blocks. Kylie Marshall hit .533 (8-0-15) and had 6 digs and 2 blocks. Farren Powe hit .571 (4-0-7). And Nikki Fowler hit .350 (10-3-20) and had 6 digs. Michaela Hanakova had 23 assists, 7 digs and 3 aces. Mindy Flynn had 3 blocks. Kelsey Mahoney had 13 assists.

Tennessee played 12 different players during the match, 11 of whom played more than one set. Chloe Goldman was taken out of the match in the second set and was replaced by defensive specialist Jaye Loyd. During the break between sets, Loyd donned the libero jersey and played out the match at that position.

With their 11th victory tonight Tennessee matches their win total from the disappointing 2007 season when they went 11-18. And the Lady Vols still have at least 12 more matches in 2008 to improve that record!

I’ve been a little too busy the past day or two to get notes up for the matches this week. So I’ll just do a quickie for tonight’s match and do proper notes for the SEC matches this weekend soon. You can check out the official match notes from Tennessee as well.

ETSU is 7-10 overall and 4-6 in the Atlantic Sun Conference. Tennessee leads the all time series 27-5, though according to ETSU we only lead the series 10-0! Tennessee has won the last 18 meetings in a row. The Bucs are running a promotion tonight called “Squeeze the Orange”! The first 150 fans will receive an orange stress ball. Game time is 7:00pm ET in Johnson City TN. UT’s notes say the game will be available online, but I don’t see the match listed on the schedule. Or you can see it live — in the Knoxville area it is just a quick two hour drive to ETSU!

Tennessee lost a pair of matches this weekend against the top two teams in the SEC East, but got a win over an out of conference rival. Kelsey Mahoney got her 3rd career double-double. Five players on the Lady Vols roster matched or exceeded career highs.

• Tennessee is 11-7 all time vs Louisville
• Tennessee is 26-25 all time vs South Carolina
• Tennessee is 9-38-1 all time vs Florida

• With 957 career digs, Chloe Goldman has surpassed Lynn Lovingier (1995-98) for the #10 spot on UT’s career digs chart.

• Tennessee had 50 blocks during their three matches this past week, giving them at least 5 blocks per set for three of the seven weeks so far this year. Alyssa Hilby has been a big part of that, stepping in after Leah Hinkey’s injury. With 1.24 blocks per set so far this season, Hilby currently stands at #7 on UT’s single season top ten list. If she can finish out the season at this pace she’d join several other accomplished freshman on one of the block record lists, all of whom went on to have big careers as Lady Vols:

– Sarah Blum (SEC All-Freshman Team, two-time All-SEC, All-American)
– Robin Maine (three-time All-SEC)
– Tanya Haave (All-SEC volleyball her freshman year, All-American and Lady Vol Hall of Famer in basketball)
– and current teammate Leah Hinkey (SEC All-Freshman Team)

• Career bests matched or exceeded this weekend
Milan Clarke: blocks
Mindy Flynn: digs
Alyssa Hilby: blocks and points
Kayla Jeter: hitting percentage and assists
Kelsey Mahoney: kills, attacks, digs, and blocks

Despite some tough play, the Lady Vols lost to Florida this afternoon 3-0 (25-22, 25-12, 25-22). Tennessee was tied in the twenties in sets one and three but couldn’t stop the Gators. Nikki Fowler had 13 kills and 6 digs. Farren Powe had 8 kills and hit .462 (8-2-13). Chloe Goldman had 11 digs while Kylie Marshall had 10. Alyssa Hilby led the team in blocking with 6 and Milan Clarke added 3 more. Kelsey Mahoney and Michaela Hanakova splitting time setting had 18 and 10 assists respectively. More later tonight.

UPDATE: Tennessee has the story and stats. BTW – was I the only one that assumed Sun Sports would use real reporters for their broadcast and not what appeared to be University of Florida employees?

Tennessee lost to South Carolina tonight 3-0 (25-22, 25-14, 25-23). With 10 digs, Chloe Goldman is now tied for the #10 best career total. Alyssa Hilby hit .444 (5-1-9), Kylie Marshall hit .400 (7-1-15), Kayla Jeter hit .400 (4-0-10), Farren Powe hit .364 (5-1-11), and Milan Clarke hit .263 (7-2-19). More later.

UPDATE: Tennessee and South Carolina have the story and stats.

Just a reminder that info about this weekend’s matches is available! I posted earlier this week. And official match notes from Tennessee and South Carolina are online too. Florida‘s will be up later this weekend.

Some unexpected car problems will probably scuttle my plans to be in Columbia tonight. If you’re stuck at home too there are options! Gametracker for the South Carolina match will be here. Video will be available as well but I don’t know if it is free or not.

Gametracker for the Florida match will be here. Live audio is available. The match will be broadcast on Sun Sports (DISH channel 422 or DirecTV channel 653).

The Knoxville News-Sentinel has an article about Nikki Fowler today. The piece features interviews with Fowler and Coach Patrick about expectations after her stellar rookie season and the reshuffling they had to do after Leah Hinkey’s season ending injury.