LEXINGTON, Ky. — Senior Alli Stumler hit .429, killing 15 balls without an error Wednesday night as the No. 7 Kentucky Volleyball team raced past Georgia 3-0 (25-10, 25-14, 25-18) at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington.
UK hit a monstrous .416 as a team Wednesday night, with all attackers hitting above .250 and registering five players who hit above .300 on one of the most clinical offensive nights of the season for Kentucky.
Emma Grome ran the Kentucky offense to the .416 clip with 39 assists in the match to go alongside eight digs and a block. Grome, one of the most talented freshmen in the country, is averaging 11.4 assists per set, good enough for sixth in the nation, and the most for any freshman setter in the country.
Defensively, it was a clinic for the Wildcats, who held Georgia to a .111 hitting percentage, hitting for a negative percentage in the first set and never hitting above .200 in any set of the match. It was a great night for senior Lauren Tharp, who tied her season-high with 14 digs in the match and set a new SEC-career high with the 14 digs, topping her previous high of 10 vs. Mississippi State in October of this season. Tharp led the team in digs in a match for the first time all season.
Junior middle blocker Azhani Tealer had another sensational night, hitting .500 for the Blue and White with nine kills on 14 swings for a .500 hitting percentage. She also had four blocks and a pair of digs as her season hitting percentage bumped up to .440 and she’s averaging 2.69 kills per set.
With Wednesday night’s result, Kentucky collects its sixth sweep in conference matches and improves to 11-1 this season. The Wildcats are 18-4 overall. Georgia falls to 8-15 and 4-8 in SEC action.
Kentucky’s longest homestand of the season in SEC play continues this weekend as it welcomes the Texas A&M Aggies to Lexington for a two-match series Saturday and Sunday. Saturday’s match will be at 4 p.m. ET on the SEC Network, followed by a Sunday showdown at 2 p.m. ET on the SEC Network with Paul Sunderland and former Penn State All-American Salima Rockwell on the call.
