Junior Florida outside hitter Kristy Jaeckel had a match-high 11 kills on .524 hitting Sunday and junior right-side/setter Kelly Murphy contributed up a career-high eight serving aces in a 3-0 (25-19, 25-13, 25-17) Southeastern Conference volleyball victory against Arkansas in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.
The Gators (12-1, 5-0 SEC) hit .408 in the match, the team’s second-highest hitting efficiency of the season that extended Florida’s streak of matches hitting better than .300 to four. Murphy had eight of Florida’s 12 service aces, the most since the Gators’ 12 against Auburn on Nov. 9, 2008.
“The story of this match was definitely our offense,” said Florida coach Mary WIse. “In the 76 swings we took, we only hit one ball out of bounds. I thought that our players did a really nice job attacking the ball. If you look at Kristy Jaeckel’s numbers and Lauren Bledsoe’s numbers, not only did they not hit balls out of bounds, but they weren’t blocked either. We felt it wasn’t our best defensive performance and that we left some blocks out there, but give credit to Arkansas for that.”
Murphy finished with a match-high 14.5 points. The eight aces tied the second-most aces in a single match.
“Kelly certainly got into a groove there with her serving,” Wise said. “Kelly was third on our team in kills tonight, but she still comes out our leading point-scorer. That’s how valuable she is to our team.”
Aury Cruz holds the single-match record of service aces with nine, established against South Carolina on Oct. 26, 2003.
“I think once I got the first two [aces], it just built my confidence up,” Murphy said. “I just went back there and felt pretty comfortable taking a harder rip at it. I think that our team saw that the harder we serve, the better chance we are going to have at getting our opponents out of system. We were being really aggressive with our serving today.”
Jaeckel’s 11 kills came on 21 swings with no errors for a .324 hitting efficiency with five digs and two blocks for 13.0 points. For the weekend, she averaged a squad-best 3.14 kills per set on .345 hitting and totaled 26.0 points over the two matches combined.
Senior middle blocker Lauren Bledsoe charted seven kills on 11 swings with no errors for a .636 hitting efficiency, while senior outside hitter Callie Rivers added six kills on .385 hitting with a squad-best 11 digs. Junior middle blocker Cassandra Anderson chipped in five kills on .571 hitting with two blocks. Freshman setter Chanel Brown dished out a match-high 21 assists, while junior Cinthya Roberto, making her first career appearance at libero, added eight digs.
Florida returns to action on Friday at Alabama. The opening serve is at 8 p.m. ET.
BROWN HONORED: Freshman setter Chanel Brown, who helped No. 2 Florida’s offense to victories over No. 16 Louisiana State and Arkansas, is the SEC Freshman of the Week. She averaged a team-best 7 assists per set and helped to direct the team to .355 hitting efficiency. She led Florida in assists in both matches—28 against LSU and 21 against Arkansas.