University of Tennessee Athletics
LADY VOLUNTEER VOLLEYBALL HAS SEASON TO REMEMBER
March 22, 2006 | Volleyball
March 22, 2006
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - The University of Tennessee Lady Volunteer volleyball team entered the 2005 season with a high level of confidence. It was coming off a successful 32-3 campaign the previous year, which saw Tennessee not only advance to the NCAA Regional Semifinals for the first time in 20 years, but also achieve its first Southeastern Conference regular-season title ever and initial tournament crown in a pair of decades. The Big Orange proceeded to build on the commitment from that season and to go through the challenging, but exciting, process of discovering what its "Arrival Point 2005" was going to be.
After a number of road blocks and construction detours during the early part of the campaign that caused Tennessee to start out 9-6, UT would right itself and rev its engines for the highway. By the end of the season, the Big Orange found itself playing in the NCAA National Semifinals in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, with three of the best teams the nation produced in 2005.
Following the conclusion of its 25-9 campaign, Tennessee attained another monumental achievement, reaching its highest national ranking in school history, as the Lady Vols came in sixth in the final CSTV/AVCA Top 25 Coaches Poll. Tennessee entered the year ninth, tied for the previous high, before falling out of the poll in the midst of a 9-6 start (with five of those losses coming against teams who would later advance to the Sweet 16). UT began its season 11-7 before embarking on a nine-match winning streak and finishing strong with a 14-2 mark over its final 16 matches.
The historic campaign began with a convincing 30-11, 30-12, 30-23 win at Lipscomb in UT's first-ever visit to the city of Nashville. A 13-0 run in the first game allowed senior setter Julie Knytych 13 consecutive serves, tied for the 13th-longest such streak in NCAA Division I history. UT held the Lady Bisons to a stifling -.259 hitting percentage in the first game and -.078 for the match as a whole.
Tennessee followed that trip with one to the central part of another state, this time Missouri. The Lady Vols moved to 2-0 with a 30-23, 30-22, 30-26 sweep of Utah, a team which would finish its campaign in the NCAA Tournament's Round of 32. Senior libero Amy Morris, playing at the time as an outside hitter, hit .520 in the contest (13-0-25), the highest hitting percentage of her career as a Lady Vol, to go with 21 digs.
 Yuliya Stoyanova |
Two Lady Vols were named to the All-Tiger Invitational Team in junior middle blocker Sarah Blum and senior middle blocker Kristen Andre.
Tennessee made the trip back home to begin its home slate with the Comcast Lady Vol Classic. The Big Orange welcomed to Knoxville three teams in Baylor, Central Michigan and College of Charleston. In their first match of the tournament, the Lady Vols gave previously-undefeated Baylor its initial loss of the year with a 30-20, 30-28, 30-19. Andre tied her career high (and set her season high) with 10 blocks in the contest, even more impressive considering the short length of the match.
A convincing 30-23, 30-20, 30-18 win over Central Michigan in their second match set up a championship showdown between the Lady Vols and College of Charleston, which was coached by former Lady Vol assistant Sherry Dunbar, in her third season with the Cougars. Tennessee's dominant 30-26, 30-21, 30-19 win gave CofC its first loss of the 2005 campaign and, astonishingly enough, its last setback of the season until a defeat in the NCAA Tournament's Second Round.
 Kelsey Fautsch |
A challenging Mortar Board Premier was the next exit for Tennessee on its journey. Awaiting the Lady Vols were Xavier, Ohio and Purdue, all of whom would be 20-match winners in 2006. Three of the four squads playing ended up advancing to the Sweet 16 (UT, Ohio and Purdue). To open play, the Big Orange dispatched Xavier, 30-26, 30-12, 22-30, 30-22.
Following the contest, three Lady Vols were honored by Mortar Board, Inc., with junior defensive specialist Annie Sadowski being named Top Scholar for the Lady Vols, Knytych earning Most Improved Scholar accolades and Andre attaining the Community Service Award.
In UT's next contest, Ohio swept the Lady Vols, 30-20, 30-24, 30-27. The host Boilermakers did the same later that day, defeating UT in straight games, 30-26, 30-22, 30-26. Andre was named to the All-Tournament Team, hitting .400 (40-10-75) in the three matches.
Southeastern Conference play opened the following weekend, and a pair of matches in Fayetteville, Ark., served as the next jaunt for the Lady Vols. The Lady Razorbacks of Arkansas fell to Tennessee, 30-27, 30-24, 30-26, as the Big Orange won its SEC opener for the third straight season.
 Kristen Andre |
A frustrated 7-4 Tennessee squad headed to Louisville, Ky., for a battle with No. 6 Louisville, in search of its first-ever win over a team ranked among the top six nationally. An intense match on both sides of the court saw the Cardinals eek out a 30-19, 27-30, 30-27, 23-30, 15-13 win. In the contest, Morris tied the school record for digs with 36 in the match, and the final Cardinal kill went off a diving dig effort from the senior.
The Mississippi schools paid a visit to Tennessee's Stokely Athletics Center and left with straight-game losses. UT topped Ole Miss, 30-21, 30-26, 30-16, and Mississippi State, 30-26, 30-27, 30-24. In the contest versus the Lady Rebels, the Orange and White hit at a .455 clip (58-13-99), which would prove to be the third-highest average of the campaign, including a season-high game hitting percentage of .741 (21-1-27) in the third stanza.
The Big Orange took on fifth-ranked Florida at the site of its historic pair of victories the previous season (two 3-2 wins to win SEC regular-season and tournament titles and end UF's NCAA-record SEC winning streak of 145 matches), but 2005 proved to be a different story as the Gators easily dispatched UT, 30-22, 30-22, 30-24.
 Sarah Blum |
Outside hitter Milan Clarke became the first Lady Vol to win the SEC Freshman of the Week award, given for the first time on a regular basis in 2005, after she hit .250 (6-1-20) versus Florida and .379 (12-1-29) against Georgia. She was on fire in game three versus the Bulldogs, hitting .583 (8-1-12) and recording the winning kill on the final rally of the match.
 Team practice at national semifinals. |
The next match saw Tennessee lose in heartbreaking fashion to Alabama, 30-23, 24-30, 30-28, 31-29, but defeat would end up befalling the Lady Vols just twice more in 2006. In this contest, the Lady Vols had a 29-24 lead in the fourth game and were poised to send the contest to a fifth and deciding game, but the Crimson Tide had other ideas, scoring the final seven points. The match ended a challenging start to the 2005 campaign which saw UT play 13 of its initial 18 matches away from Knoxville, all against top opposition.
Tennessee returned home for eight of the next 13 contests and began its nine-match winning streak and 14-2 run to end the season by topping Kentucky, 30-23, 36-34, 30-25. In the contest, Andre hit .680 (17-0-25) for the highest hitting percentage recorded by a Lady Vol in 2005 (with 12 or more kills).
The Lady Vols headed back to the road in their next match and, for the second straight year, dropped a game-one decision by a 30-15 score, but rallied to win the match, topping South Carolina, 15-30, 30-18, 30-18, 30-21. (Last season, Tennessee topped Arkansas, 15-30, 30-22, 30-28, 30-24, in the midst of a 14-match winning skein.) UT's -.029 (10-11-35) hitting percentage in game one against the Gamecocks would be just the first of two times the Lady Vols would hit at a negative percentage in 2005, but the Big Orange rebounded in astounding fashion in the second game, hitting at a .522 clip (13-1-23).
 Annie Sadowski |
First, in conjunction with the university's basketball teams' Big Orange Madness, a school-record crowd of 3,311 watched the Lady Vols sweep Georgia, 30-25, 30-20, 30-26. The number of fans more than doubled the previous school mark and was at the time the third-largest to ever witness a Lady Vol volleyball match, home or away.
Two days later, a national-television audience (CSTV) watched Tennessee earn a win over a top-five opponent for the first time in school history (dropping its first 23 against elite opponents), topping No. 4 Florida in an epic contest, 30-22, 32-30, 19-30, 37-39, 15-12. Game four is the highest-scoring stanza in both Florida's and Tennessee's history, and each team had five game points in that stanza. The Gators' 203-match winning streak against unranked opponents came to a stop, although the Lady Vols would prove their unranked status to not be indicative of the team's quality.
In the historic contest, Andre obliterated her former career-high total in kills of 21 (which would remain her second-highest kill output through the end of her season and career) with an incredible sum of 33 in that match. Knytych's assist total of 64 was her highest of the campaign and just four off her career record. The team total of 21 blocks also proved to be a season high, while Blum's sum of 11 set the team season high-water mark, which she would also tie in an even-bigger win later in the campaign.
The following match saw Tennessee sweep an opponent in as tight a contest as you can have, topping Kentucky on the road, 31-29, 31-29, 30-28. It was the first time in the rally-serving era that the Lady Vols had ever played a match in which a sweep saw all three games decided by just two points. There were 32 ties and 12 lead changes in the contest. Freshman outside hitter Mindy Flynn started coming into her own in the contest, finishing UT's 5-0 run to clinch the third game and the contest with three powerful kills, including consecutive putaways which gave UT a 29-28 lead.
 Chelsea Noble |
UT's 30-22, 30-24, 30-25 defeat of Alabama saw the Lady Vols record their highest hitting percentage of the campaign at .467 (56-7-105). Morris, who moved from outside hitter to libero earlier in the season, returned to the outside position for this week and hit .500 (16-1-30) in the contest against the Crimson Tide. Andre had another outstanding contest, hitting .800 (8-0-10).
What followed was a 30-19, 30-14, 30-17 commanding sweep of Auburn on "Senior Day." In that contest, senior middle blocker Heather Harrington had a day to remember with a hitting percentage that reached as high as .900 (9-0-10) before settling for an outstanding .733 clip (11-0-15), recording career highs in both hitting percentage and kills. The squad's .448 hitting percentage (54-11-96) was the third-highest posted by the team in 2005.
The SEC Tournament started on a high note for the second-seeded Lady Vols, as UT dispatched Mississippi State in straight games, 30-15, 30-21, 30-27. The win moved the Big Orange's record to 20-7 and earned Tennessee its fourth consecutive 20-win campaign, the first such occurrence at Rocky Top since the 1981-84 teams did so. Flynn led all players in hitting percentage in the contest with a .875 average (7-0-8).
Tennessee's run in the tournament, however, came to an abrupt stop the next night as the Lady Vols dropped a heartbreaking decision to the host Alabama Crimson Tide, 30-26, 18-30, 18-30, 31-29, 15-13.
 Kelsey Fautsch (15) and Amy Morris (14) |
A major school record was destroyed in the contest, while another was threatened. Morris set a new dig mark with 42, topping the previous standard of 36, while Fautsch, having never even reached 20 kills in a match as a Lady Vol, tied for the fifth-highest total in UT history with 35. She had the two biggest kills of the night, staving off a pair of UND match points in game four at 29-28 and 30-29 with putdowns. Both kills went off Fighting Irish block attempts which fell just wide of landing in-bounds.
The next day, the team watched the NCAA Selection Show and was pleased to find out that it was playing host to the First and Second Rounds of the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive year and earned a national seed of 15. A possible meeting with defending National Finalist Minnesota awaited in the Second Round, but all focus went to Jacksonville State, UT's opponent in its first contest.
The Gamecocks proved not to be an obstacle in Tennessee's path to San Antonio, as the Lady Vols prevailed, 30-23, 30-13, 30-28. They did fight hard, however, in the third game. The Big Orange took a 29-24 edge in that stanza, but had to hold off a furious JSU rally for the victory.
The Golden Gophers did indeed present themselves as Tennessee's next opponent and would prove to be the formidable adversary that was expected. Minnesota took a 2-1 game lead and 25-20 advantage in the fourth stanza, before a heart-stopping Lady Vol comeback eliminated the Golden Gophers from the tournament and moved the Big Orange to the Regionals for the second straight year. Tennessee, determined not to let its season end, responded to that late five-point deficit with an 8-1 run. A solo block from Knytych clinched the stanza and momentum for Tennessee's 30-19, 24-30, 20-30, 30-27, 15-11 victory. A powerful kill from Blum completed the win. With the win, Tennessee completed the 2005 campaign with a perfect 13-0 mark at home (39-4 games record), and, dating back to previous seasons, has won 19 straight in Knoxville and 28 of 29. In the contest, Morris broke the school record for digs in a season, previously at 445 (she would finish with 506).
The scenery only got better from there.
A trip to snowy University Park, Pa., awaited and a showdown with No. 2 Penn State, which was 31-2 entering the contest, 20-0 in Big Ten play and 30-2 all-time in home NCAA Tournament contests. With an impressive 30-27, 14-30, 30-27, 33-31 win in front of 2,530 loud, intense Nittany Lion fans, Tennessee would earn its second win over a top-five opponent in an 11-match span after having never defeated one previously. Penn State was poised to force a fifth and deciding stanza, taking 28-25, 30-29 and 31-30 advantages before UT rallied with a number of dramatic tallies to end the contest.
The win also moved Tennessee into uncharted territory, as the Lady Vols had never previously reached the final eight of an NCAA Tournament.
 Julie Knytych |
Blum tallied 11 blocks against the Nittany Lions to tie herself for the most recorded by a Lady Vol in 2005. That and nine putbacks versus the Tigers earned her State College Regional Most Valuable Player honors. Also selected to the all-region team were Fautsch and Knytych. Andre had an outstanding weekend as well, evidenced by her .576 hitting percentage against the Tigers (19-0-33) to go with a very respectable .250 hitting percentage against PSU (12-6-24).
The "Arrival Point 2005" that Tennessee ended at was one in which 311 NCAA Division I schools aspired for, but only four were able to make their way to: San Antonio. At the Alamodome, the Lady Vols played in front of the largest crowd to ever see a Lady Vol volleyball match (7,931) and saw their trip through the 2005 campaign finally come to an end at the hands of the eventual National Champion Washington Huskies, 30-25, 30-19, 30-21. Andre would be the only non-championship match participant to earn a spot on the All-NCAA Championship Team, finishing out her Lady Vol career with 21 kills and a .390 hitting percentage (21-5-41) versus the Huskies.
The last two matches of Tennessee's journey were broadcast live on ESPNU, while the Tennessee-Washington contest was also shown on a tape-delay basis on ESPN2. Many fans were able to watch the Big Orange's journey through the 2005 campaign as a total of seven matches were telecast, including three on the national level.
An extended trip, which saw Tennessee earn its three biggest wins in school history (based on opponent's national ranking) and move two rounds farther than ever accomplished previously, ended with the Lady Vols reaching heights never before achieved in the national ranking. Tennessee completed the campaign sixth, surpassing its previous high-water mark of ninth achieved both in the preseason set of rankings this season and in the second-to-last to be released in 2004.
 Annie Sadowski (7) and Kristen Andre |
The senior class, which drove the vehicle that was the 2005 Lady Vol volleyball team, would complete its four-year stint at Rocky Top with an outstanding .756 winning percentage (99-32), the best of any four-year class in Tennessee history. The group of Andre, defensive specialist Jasmine Fullove, Harrington, Knytych and Morris (with the exception of her first season, spent at Penn State), went from playing its first two campaigns at UT without participating in an NCAA Tournament to moving onto the Regional Semifinals as juniors and the National Semifinals as seniors.
In the record books, Knytych became the first Lady Vol to play in every game of a four-year career at Rocky Top. With 465 games played, she placed herself sixth in NCAA Division I history for consecutive games played (fifth of players who played in every game contested in their respective careers). Her career assists total of 5,803 is the third-highest in SEC annals and the 28th-most accumulated all-time by a Division I player.
Blum set a school mark for blocks/game with a 1.53 average, currently has a career average of 1.45, and enters her senior season with 465 career blocks, one away from second on the UT career blocks list.
Morris' digs/game season average of 4.69 and career average of 4.01 demolished the previous marks of 3.71 and 3.36, respectively. Morris finished with 1,338 total digs, the second-highest total ever posted by a Big Orange player, especially impressive as the Penn State transfer accomplished it in just three years at Rocky Top.
 Rob Patrick |
Andre became the fourth AVCA Division I All-American in school history, as she was named to the second team, while Knytych and Stoyanova earned Honorable Mention accolades. All three also received All-South Region accolades, while Morris achieved All-Region Honorable Mention honors. Andre and Stoyanova attained First Team All-SEC notice, while Blum, Knytych and Morris secured honors on the Second Team. Andre was named SEC Player of the Week on three occasions (Oct. 3, 24 and 31), while Knytych snared the honor once (Nov. 16). Vball Magazine named Andre a First Team All-American, while Morris attained mention on the Third Team.
Patrick finished as the winningest coach in Lady Vol history, as his .668 winning percentage (191-95) moved him past Bob Bertucci's (1979-86) .666 winning percentage (229-115). He earned an impressive honor himself, as Patrick was named the Vball Magazine National Coach of the Year.
Many sights were seen on Tennessee's trip through the 2005 campaign and to the "Arrival Point 2005," which were enjoyed by players, coaches, administrators and fans alike. The terrain was rocky at times and had precipitous curves at others, but the scenery became lush and green for many parts of the trip as well, especially toward the breathtaking conclusion of the journey.
