No. 9 Tennessee kept rolling on Sunday, using a balanced attack and a strong finish to beat No. 22 Vanderbilt 3-1 inside Food City Center.
The Lady Vols stretched their winning streak to seven and moved to 16-3 overall, 7-2 in SEC play. Kennedi Rogers paced Tennessee with 18 kills and 11 digs for a double-double, while Maggie Dostic added 11 kills and 10 digs. Jalyn Stout filled up the stat sheet with a match-high 19 digs and eight kills, and Caroline Kerr turned in a double-double of her own with 40 assists, 14 digs and six kills.
Tennessee set the tone early in the opener. Rogers came out swinging with four kills during a 5-1 start, and she finished the set with six kills while hitting 1.000. Kerr added two kills at the net and had 10 assists as the Lady Vols kept finding soft spots in the Vanderbilt defense.
The first real separation came with Kerr at the service line. Vanderbilt had closed to within 7-5, but Tennessee answered with five straight points to move ahead 12-5, including three points on Commodore attack errors into the Tennessee block.
That run sent Vanderbilt to a timeout at 11-5. Anni Tang was part of four blocks in the set and added two kills, while Vanderbilt’s eight attack errors only made the Lady Vols’ job easier.
Emma Frietch came in to serve and delivered an ace for a 17-10 lead, and Sydney Jaynes capped the closing stretch with a serving run that pushed Tennessee from 20-13 to 23-13. The Lady Vols finished off a 25-15 win.
Vanderbilt settled in during the second set and made Tennessee work for every point. The frame was tied 14 times, including nine straight ties from 9-9, and the Commodores did a better job defensively of keeping the Lady Vols from separating. Tennessee never led after 6-5.
After Vanderbilt went up 11-9 on a Samantha Wunsch service ace, Tennessee pulled level at 11, and the set stayed tight through 17-17. Then Vanderbilt took over.
Hailee Mack served four points in a five-point burst, with a Rogers attack error and back-to-back Maya Witherspoon kills helping open a 21-17 lead. Mack added an ace, and although Tennessee trimmed it to 22-19 on a Stout ace, Witherspoon kept Vanderbilt in control.
She finished the set with a service ace for a 25-20 Vanderbilt win and a 1-1 match.
Tennessee responded immediately in the third. Stout served five straight points to spark a 7-1 lead, with three of those points coming on Vanderbilt errors.
The Lady Vols then started finding open space again, with Dostic and Kerr slipping balls into the middle of the floor. Stout delivered two straight kills to extend the margin to 15-6, and Tennessee kept control from there.
Vanderbilt did make a brief push, outscoring Tennessee 7-4 over the next stretch and getting a Maya Witherspoon service ace to cut the lead to 18-12. Nia Hall added a kill for a 20-13 Tennessee edge, and the Lady Vols kept answering at the net.
Stout and Camille Perry combined on a block to make it 21-14, launching three straight Tennessee points, and Perry later added a solo block for a 23-14 lead. Tennessee hit .355 in the set while Vanderbilt managed just .075, and the Lady Vols closed it out 25-16 to go up 2-1.
The fourth set followed a familiar script: long rallies, tight scoring and plenty of trading punches. Chelsea Sutton and Samantha Wunsch traded kills to open, and neither team could separate early.
Rogers broke through with back-to-back kills for a 9-7 lead, but Vanderbilt tied it right back at 9. Kerr responded with a kill, and Frietch delivered her second ace of the match to make it 11-9.
Vanderbilt kept hanging around and tied it again after a Witherspoon kill and a Rogers attack error.
The set was tied 12 times, but Tennessee found the biggest swing after a 14-all deadlock. The Lady Vols went on a 4-1 run capped by a Rogers kill to move ahead 18-15 and force a Vanderbilt timeout. The Commodores closed back to 19-19 and even tied it at 19 on a block of Rogers, prompting a Tennessee timeout of its own.
Out of that break, Sutton made the biggest defensive plays of the match. She teamed with Rogers on one block and with Dostic on another to put Tennessee up 21-19, then followed with a kill for point No.
- Vanderbilt answered once more through Witherspoon, but Dostic finished it off from there, scoring Tennessee’s final three points with two kills and an ace to seal the 25-22 set and the 3-1 match.
In Other News...
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Josh Heupel and MacIntyre both acknowledged it afterward as a misstep and a communication issue, a blunt admission that fits the tone of a frustrating finish. Tennessee still had a chance to close out the game before that snap, but the stalled drive opened the door for South Carolina to tie it and eventually pull away, making the missed assignment look even more costly in hindsight. [Read more 🡒]
Tennessee Fans Are Still Fuming Over How This Loss Unraveled
The frustration around Tennessees 27-24 loss to South Carolina is still easy to understand, because it was the kind of defeat that kept giving the Volunteers chances to escape and then took them away again. Tennessee had control long enough to make the result feel manageable, but the final 77 seconds turned into a painful collapse as South Carolina scored 10 points and flipped the game on its head.
Josh Heupel pointed directly to the issues that made the finish so hard to swallow, including the 12 penalties for 90 yards that repeatedly put Tennessee behind the chains. Several of those flags wiped out touchdown passes, the sort of self-inflicted mistakes that can change a game before the fourth quarter even arrives. For a team with bigger goals, the lesson was as obvious as it was costly: execution has to be cleaner, because losses like this tend to linger. [Read more 🡒]
Tennessee Benefits After South Carolinas Costly Postgame Chaos
South Carolinas celebration after a game-winning field goal against Tennessee came with a hefty price tag, as the SEC issued a $500,000 fine for fans storming the field at Williams-Brice Stadium. It was the third field-storming penalty in the league this season, and the first under the SECs new flat-rate system, which replaced the previous escalating approach.
For Tennessee, the aftermath of a painful finish at least comes with a small bit of compensation. Under the leagues policy, the fine money will go to the visiting team affected by the violation, meaning the Volunteers will receive the proceeds from South Carolinas latest run-in with the SEC office. [Read more 🡒]