Tennessee split their last home matches of the season, falling to Florida but defeating South Carolina. Four players matched or exceeded career highs this weekend.

• Tennessee is 9-39-1 all time vs Florida, and 27-25 all time vs South Carolina.

• Two Lady Vols jumped into the record books after this weekend’s matches. With 307 blocks, Mindy Flynn is now #10 on Tennessee’s career blocks chart. And with 953 digs, Kylie Marshall is now #10 on the career digs list.

• Tennessee is 9-3 in regular season home closing matches under Coach Patrick.

• With their 13th SEC win of the season, the Lady Vols have tied their second best regular season conference win total. The 2005 squad went 13-3, while the 2004 team went 15-1.

• Tennessee finished with a home record of 11-3 this season. Their only losses were to teams currently ranked in the top 25: #16 Illinois, #19 Kentucky, and #14 Florida.

• Against Florida on Friday, the Lady Vols broke the home attendance mark of 1,000 for only the fourth time in school history. All but one of those matches were against the Gators.

• Tennessee has now won at least 20 matches 17 times in the past 36 seasons. Coach Patrick has done it 6 times in his 12 seasons. (Three other years he just missed that mark with 19 wins.)

• Since they are splitting setting duties this season, Kelsey Mahoney and Michaela Hanakova are also splitting the assists stats and maybe not getting as much attention compared to other setters who play full-time. However, if you combine their stats they compare very favorably to the rest of the SEC setters. Mahoney has 605 assists, while Hanakova has 534. That’s a combined total of 1139 assists with 10.95 assists per set.

                      assists   per set
Murphy/Bathelt, UF       982     11.16
Mahoney/Hanakova, UT    1139     10.95
B. Denson-Dorman, SC    1014     10.47
S. Rumely, UK           1091     10.39
K. Gates, UGA           1013      9.74

• Mindy Flynn, better known for her hitting and blocking skills, is kicking it up a notch in another stat. On Friday she broke her career best record with 7 digs then just missed doing it again with 6 digs on Sunday, making this her best weekend ever in that category. Her previous best weekend was in a three match stretch at the Lady Vol Classic in 2006, where she dug up 9 balls. The 13 digs was also her best back to back match total. Twice she has notched 10 digs over a two match stretch — the last matches of the 2006 season, and earlier this year. In the five matches so far in November (with two still to go) she has had 26 digs. Her previous best months are September and October of 2006 where she had 30 digs over 12 matches and 27 digs over 9 matches, respectively. (Yes, I may have too much time on my hands today!)

• Amanda Friday got the first ace of her career, and did it vs the #12 team in the country!

• Career bests matched or exceeded this weekend
Mindy Flynn: digs
Chloe Goldman: aces and points
Alyssa Hilby: attacks, digs, and blocks
Kelsey Mahoney: assists

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 11:46 am.