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SMU Beats Kentucky for the First Time
Suli Davis hit .340 with 25 kills as No. 8 SMU won 3-1 in Nassau. SMU scored 100 points across the four sets and Kentucky scored 96.
SMU beat No. 3 Kentucky 3-1 (27-25, 21-25, 25-21, 27-25) at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in Nassau on Saturday, the first win over Kentucky in the programme's history.
Suli Davis took 25 kills on .340 hitting. Two of the four sets finished 27-25 and SMU won both of them, and across the whole match SMU scored 100 points against Kentucky's 96.
Kentucky blocked more, fifteen to thirteen, and served better, four aces to three, and none of that is why they lost.
Kentucky Hit .161 and Nothing Else Mattered
Kentucky put 51 kills down against 28 errors on 143 swings, which is .161. SMU put 60 down against 25 on 137, which is .255. On a night decided by four points in total, that is the match.
Hannah Beauford ran 47 assists for SMU, Victoria Harris dug seventeen balls and Favor Anyanwu had eight blocks. Morgan Gaerte led Kentucky with seventeen kills and seven blocks and Brooklyn DeLeye had fourteen.
Gaerte was the reason Kentucky beat No. 18 North Carolina three days earlier, and she was arguably the best player on this floor too, which made no difference to the result.
Neither school quoted anybody. Kentucky's own athletics site has published no account of the match at all, so there is no version of Saturday night in the words of a person who was in the room.
SMU Have Beaten Three Ranked Teams in Three Weeks
On 23 August SMU swept Texas A&M, the defending national champions, in Milwaukee. On 9 September they beat No. 9 Texas in five sets. On Saturday they beat the third-ranked team in the country.
SMU's own recap calls it the sixteenth ranked win under Sam Erger, who is in her fifth season in Dallas.
The Mustangs were eleventh in the country when they beat the champions and eighth on Saturday, and they have not been ranked inside the top five at any point while doing it.
They are 6-1 and they play Purdue for the Paradise Invitational title on Sunday. Purdue are the other side in this four-team field who have swept the defending national champions this season.
Kentucky Have Two Losses in a Fortnight
Kentucky were third on 1,417 points in the poll released a week ago, behind Nebraska and Pittsburgh and ahead of Stanford. They are 6-2 and both of those defeats have landed inside two weeks.
Kassie O'Brien set 46 balls and Lizzie Carr blocked eight and it was still the worst attacking night the team has had, at .161 across four sets against a side hitting nearly a hundred points better.
Kentucky play Houston at one o'clock Central on Sunday for third place in a four-team tournament, which is not where a team that was third in the country expected to spend its weekend.
