Electricity hung in the air Wednesday night when the Missouri volleyball team took to the Hearnes Center court. The opponent, the No. 17 Tennessee Volunteers, is the reigning Southeastern Conference champion and was favored to dominate the league newcomers in their SEC debut.
The bad blood between the two teams traced back seven years, when Missouri’s most successful season ended in the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight round. The 3,114 Missouri fans watching the game live and those watching on ESPNU who wished for a classic game were treated to one.
In their first game in the SEC, the Tigers upset the Volunteers 3-2 (20-25, 14-25, 27-25, 25-21, 15-9) in a five-set thriller.
Early in the first set, the Tigers played evenly with their opponents, grabbing an early 10-5 lead. Before long, the Volunteers would even things at 12. From that point on, the Tigers would never be able to regain the lead and would lose the first set 25-20.
The second set saw the momentum shift even further to Tennessee, who took an early 8-1 lead and would pull ahead by as many as nine points in the set, winning 25-14.
With only a .174 attacking percentage and the Volunteers racking up 39 kills in the two sets, Missouri was unable to create offensive momentum.
After the second set, the team returned to the locker room to reorganize itself. But instead of shouting at his players, coach Wayne Kreklow remained calm and confident.
“At the end of game two, the only thing we keep talking about was to keep playing our game,” Kreklow said. “The more we got in to it, the more we got into a rhythm and things just started flowing.”
Sophomore libero Sarah Meister, who replaced sophomore Jade Hayes for most of the match, recalled the energy she and her teammates built up during the break to unleash on their opponents in the third set.
“We got back to the locker room and said to ourselves that we had nothing to lose out there,” Meister said. “We had everything to gain. I think we came out a little bit nervous at first but we finally just came together and brought the heat.”
In the third set, the Tigers kept the game much closer. With the score at 21-19 in Tennessee’s favor, Missouri went on a five-point scoring streak spurned by the attack of junior outside hitter Lisa Henning and sophomore outside hitter Taylor Simpson, giving the team its first lead of the set.
After the 27-25 set victory, the next two sets would follow suit. On a huge wave of momentum, Missouri won the fourth set 25-21 and finished 15-9 in the final set, which started out with a 6-0 run.
The newfound success came in a resurgent Henning and Simpson. Henning led the match with 26 kills on 65 total attacks and 11 digs, and Simpson, a transfer, had her best performance as a Tiger with 10 kills and .265 attacking. Between the second and fifth set, the team’s attack average jumped from .174 to .253.
It was Missouri’s defense, led by sophomore Whitney Little, the league’s reigning defensive player of the week, that stunned the Volunteer. The team corralled 69 digs, 23 of which came from Meister.
With the win, Missouri is now 9-2 overall. Wednesday’s win also marked the first victory by the Tigers over a ranked team this season, which Kreklow said he thinks will boost the confidence of his players.
“It’s going to be huge, no question about it,” Kreklow said. ”To be able to come in and do something like this, it just really helps them understand that when you do simple things and execute them fairly well, we’re pretty good. Hopefully tonight was a reinforcement that when you execute you can do great things.”
Meister followed up by saying the win tonight will get the attention of other SEC teams.
“Obviously this is a new era, a new reign now that we’ve proved ourselves out there,” Meister said. “I think people can fear us now. This was just huge for us.”
