Congratulations to Farren Powe for being named the SEC Offensive Player of the Week for the first time in her career!

“Hit a team-high .593 clip with 18 kills and two errors in 27 swings as UT extended its current winning streak to a season-long seven matches by picking up wins over Georgia and LSU. Also topped the team in blocks with 11 blocks (one solo, 10 assists), in addition to collecting three digs, an assist and an ace. Set a career high with a stellar .692 hitting percentage in UT’s win over Georgia and she took over sole possession of first place on the SEC hitting percentage chart with a .417 attack average during league play.”

Farren was also named Lady Vol Athlete of the Week.

The Lady Vols win their 17th of the season, their 10th in SEC play, and their 7th in a row in a 3-0 sweep of LSU (25-22, 25-11, 25-23). Much more later!

UPDATE: Story and stats from Tennessee and LSU.

Unless you want to be early to the match tomorrow, don’t forget to set your clocks back tonight for daylight savings time!

Tennessee ended the six match win streak Georgia had built coming into tonight, defeating the Bulldogs 3-0 (25-15, 25-12, 25-16) and claiming their own six match win streak. Clarke had 11 kills, Fowler and Marshall had 7 each and both added in 9 digs as well. Powe had a big night hitting too but I can’t remember her numbers. I’ll just wait for the box score to post more! Check back later.

UPDATE: Here’s that box score and story from Tennessee, and also one from Georgia. The official Lady Vol site has a post-game analysis audio clip with Coach Patrick (located on the right side of the page under “Tennessee All-Access”).

Let’s start all over! Farren Powe had a career night hitting .692 (10-1-13). Milan Clarke led in kills with 12, hitting .429. Nikki Fowler and Kylie Marshall had 7 kills and 9 blocks each. Five players had multiple blocks: Powe with 5, Mindy Flynn, Alyssa Hilby, and Fowler with three each, and Marshall with 2. Chloe Goldman had 18 digs. Michaela Hanakova had 18 assists. Kelsey Mahoney had 17. Tennessee out hit Georgia .391 to .029.

Freshman setter Kelsey Mahoney has a video interview over at the official Lady Vol site. It’s on the right side of the page under “Tennessee All-Access”.

It’s hard to believe we’re down to just four home matches left this season! And two of them get played this weekend. On Halloween night, the Lady Vols will try to put a scare into the Georgia Bulldogs. Kids 12 and under in costume will be admitted free, and UT student-athletes will be signing autographs before the match. On Sunday, LSU comes to town.

• The bad news: no candy. The good news: Tennessee is 12-8-2 on Halloween! Things are a little more muddled when looking at the specifics of this year’s match. The Lady Vols are 3-3 at home and 1-1 vs Georgia in matches played on October 31st.

• With a win on Friday, Tennessee would have a 6 match winning streak, tying the fifth longest streak since Rob Patrick took over as coach in 1997. In late 2004, the Lady Vols won 14 in a row. In early and mid 2004, the team twice won 9 in a row. They matched that number again in 2005. In 2000, Tennessee won 6 in a row.

• With Florida’s recent loss to Georgia, the Bulldogs now have the longest current winning streak in the SEC at 6 matches. Tennessee and Kentucky are second with 5 wins in a row.

• Tennessee has won 10 of the last 11 matches against Georgia and hasn’t lost at home to them since 2001.

• If LSU wins their Friday match at Kentucky, they will be going for program win #800 vs Tennessee.

• Last season LSU senior libero Elena Martinez and Tennessee junior libero Chloe Goldman were easily the top two players at their position in the conference. And so they are again this season. Martinez is 50th in the nation with 4.56 digs per set, while Goldman is 52nd with 4.52. Just counting SEC matches Goldman gets the slight edge with 4.85 to 4.84. Both players reached 1,000 career digs this season. Combined, the two of them have won more than half of the SEC Defensive Player of the Week awards this season — Martinez three times, Goldman twice, other players four times. When they met earlier this season Martinez had 22 digs to Goldman’s 17. However, Goldman did better on serve receive with no errors compared to 3 for Martinez.

• LSU is ranked 44th in the country in blocks per set. The Lady Vols are right there with them ranking 48th. LSU’s top blocker is Brittnee Cooper, 22nd in the country with 1.30 blocks per set. Tennessee’s Alyssa Hilby is not far behind at 52nd with 1.21.

• Tennessee has lost 8 of the last 11 matches with LSU.

• Georgia (14-9, 7-5)
Tennessee leads the all time series 35-23
Tennessee won earlier this season 3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-19)
Game time is Fri, October 31st at 7:00pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video
UGA match notes

• LSU (12-7, 7-5)
Tennessee leads the all time series 16-29
Tennessee lost earlier this season 3-1 (22-25, 25-18, 25-20, 25-23)
Game time is Sun, November 2nd at 1:30pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video

	UT	UGA	LSU
Matches / Sets	23 / 84	23 / 85	19 / 71
Kills Errors / Total Attacks Kills per set Hitting Percentage	1077 413 / 2869 12.8 .231	1067 431 / 2802 12.6 .227	922 415 / 2438 13.0 .208
Assists Assists per set	1002 11.9	977 11.5	849 12.0
Service Aces Aces per set	102 1.2	113 1.3	89 1.3
Digs Digs per set	1260 15.0	1133 13.3	964 13.6
Solo Blocks / Assists Blocks per set	36 / 335 2.4	19 / 320 2.1	43 / 263 2.5

The Lady Vols are one of the top overall teams statistically in SEC play so far this season.

• Hitting percentage: 3rd
• Kills: 2nd
• Blocks: 3rd
• Aces: 5th
• Digs: 1st
• Assists: 1st

If you average those individual ranks to get an overall rank, Tennessee comes out on top of the conference:

• Tennessee: 2.5 (3 H%, 2 K, 3 B, 5 SA, 1 D, 1 A)
• Kentucky: 2.7 (2 H%, 3 K, 1 B, 1 SA, 5 D, 4 A)
• Florida: 3.2 (1 H%, 1 K, 5 B, 4 SA, 6 D, 2 A)

After three days of cold medicine induced grogginess, I’m finally feeling pretty good — except for my voice which is only half there! So it’s time to get caught up. I’m going to pass on the weekend recap, update the stats page, and get to work on the notes for this weekend. Hopefully all should be done by tomorrow.

Well I am obviously not on my way to Starkville right now as planned! I woke up this morning with a pretty bad cold. I am going to take some Nyquil and crash so there may not be any updates after todays match. I think the MSU website will have live score and stats.

The Lady Vols defeated Alabama 3-0 (25-22, 25-22, 25-22). Chloe Goldman had 17 digs, making her only the 9th player in Tennessee history to record more than 1,000 career digs. Mindy Flynn led the offense with 12 kills and a .391 hitting percentage. Nikki Fowler and Milan Clarke had 8 kills each. And Farren Powe had 6 while hitting .357. Kylie Marshall added in 11 digs. Kelsey Mahoney had 22 assists while Michaela Hanakova had 16.

UPDATE: Tennessee and Alabama have the story and stats.

• 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.