‘Tough as nails’ performance puts UK volleyball in NCAA Sweet 16. An SEC rival is next.

In the fourth set of third-seeded Kentucky volleyball’s 3-1 (25-11, 23-25, 25-22, 26-24) victory over sixth-seeded Minnesota in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday night, head coach Craig Skinner challenged a Minnesota point that tied the set at 23-all.

It was the fourth challenge of the night — and Skinner’s third — but became the only unsuccessful one over the course of four sets; the Wildcats, who dropped a heartbreaker of a second set after a dominant first-set showing, would have to dial in and win the match in a battle of grit. Sophomore outside hitter Brooklyn DeLeye, who led all athletes with 22 kills in the match, said that the team took a moment to “regroup,” during the pause in action while the officials deliberated.

“I think we knew it was going to be a back-and-forth game,” DeLeye said. “And we were just gonna have to sustain our rallies. And I think we did a good job of that, and just making sure we were stable on our block and just having our defense around us. And I think everybody contributed to that, and I think the bench did a good job of telling us what was open on our shots. Everyone as a whole really contributed to the end of the game.”

In front of a roaring crowd of 2,715 in Memorial Coliseum, DeLeye recorded her final kill of the night after a clutch assist from senior Emma Grome to put the Wildcats in position to take the set and advance to their third consecutive regional semifinals. However, the Gophers (21-11) staved off a Kentucky victory with a smooth kill from Lydia Grote.

The Wildcats responded with a kill by senior outside hitter Erin Lamb to force match point once more, and erupted with joy after Minnesota’s Julia Hanson hit the ball into the net.

“Just proud of the group’s mental toughness,” Skinner said. “The growth that we’ve had throughout the season is pretty significant. Even saw it in that match, set two let it slip away, and then tough as nails at the end of the fourth, so proud of our group. And to be able to hit (.324) on a great defensive team like that is big-time, and (DeLeye and Lamb) carried a heavy stick today.”

DeLeye hit .327 and tacked on one of Kentucky’s 58 assists. Grome was responsible for 51 of that total, 19 more than that of Minnesota setter Melani Shaffmaster. Grome also broke the Kentucky volleyball assists record in the match, reaching 4,963 total.

The Wildcats, who earned their eighth straight Southeastern Conference title after a rocky 6-5 nonconference slate, are no strangers to adversity. So, when the Gophers came out slow in the first set and couldn’t dig themselves out of the hole, Grome said UK was prepared to fight.

“We started off strong,” Grome said. “You never know how games like that are going to start, but we knew they were gonna come back a lot stronger than they did in the first set, and that’s what they did. So we knew we needed to sustain our level of energy and our level of play, and I think it dipped a little bit throughout the match, but we were able to get it back up and keep it pretty steady.”

Sure enough, Minnesota returned to the court with a fiery determination. And, despite the fact that the Wildcats strung together their longest scoring run of the night (7-0) and led by as many as five points midway through the set, the Gophers responded to even the score and ensure it wouldn’t be swept. Minnesota head coach Keegan Cook praised his roster’s fight, and said he thought the team’s “block and defense started to show up.” Cook also said “there’s not a lot of teams who can have a kind of first set like that and then turn it into a match.”

“We think about who we’ve been all year,” Cook said. “It’s serving, blocking. Transition offense has kind of been our M.O., but we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in serve-receive throughout the year, and so, yeah, unfortunately, that first set, we weren’t applying a lot of pressure and then that was going to allow Kentucky to apply pressure. So once we started applying pressure offensively, things kind of got back under control and turned into a nice little volleyball match of back-and-forth with lots of lead changes and some high-level volleyball.”

After a first set that included zero ties or lead changes, the remaining three featured 26 separate ties and 12 lead changes, including 14 ties and six lead changes in the fourth set alone. Kentucky was able to fend off a veteran Minnesota team by hitting .324 in the match, and getting strong performances from senior outside hitter Megan Wilson, who contributed 11 kills on 27 swings, redshirt freshman middle blocker Jordyn Dailey, who totaled nine kills, and redshirt middle blocker Brooke Bultema, who added eight kills and a career-high seven blocks.

“The reason that we play the tough nonconference schedule is to be prepared this time of year,” Grome said. “We might have lost those games, but we learned a lot from those games. We learned how to battle, we learned what it takes, and now we’ve just seen our growth the whole season. We’ve been going up and up and I think we’re playing really well right now at the time that we need to be. And we’ve got that edge that we’ve been talking about, and we’ve got the grittiness. So, I think we’re ready and we’re just going to have to go in and take some chances.”

Kentucky (22-7) will face Southeastern Conference rival Missouri (22-8) in the regional semifinals next weekend. The Tigers, the No. 7 seed in the regional, upset No. 2 seed Southern Methodist 3-1 (25-22, 25-14, 31-33, 25-22) on Friday night. Kentucky won both of its regular season matches against Missouri, winning 3-0 at home on Oct. 6 and 3-1 in Columbia on Nov. 27.

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