Lady Vols on cruise control for win

After a five-game close call at Arkansas last weekend, Tennessee's volleyball team could exhale Friday night.

The Lady Vols cruised to a 25-13, 25-14, 25-19 SEC victory over Mississippi State at Thompson-Boling Arena.

Nikki Fowler and Kylie Marshall moved up the record charts for Tennessee (18-6, 11-3 SEC) and the Lady Vols had their second-best offensive output of the season, hitting at a .374 clip.

"We've been playing a lot of tight matches lately, so it was nice to have one with a little breathing room,'' UT coach Rob Patrick said. "I thought we controlled the ball pretty well, which allowed us to score some real points in transition and our serving took them out of their offense a little bit."

For the eighth consecutive match, junior Nikki Fowler registered a double-double with match-high totals of 10 kills and 16 digs. The kills moved her into 13th place on UT's all-time list with 1,109, passing Sarah Blum.

Fowler had a .364 hitting percentage with just two errors in 22 swings.

Senior Kylie Marshall, meanwhile, had nine digs and moved past Julie Knytych into fifth place on UT's all-time list with 1,265. Marshall hit a season-best .455 and had four blocks and an assist.

Junior middle blocker Leah Hinkey had 10 kills and hit .600. Fellow middle blocker Farren Powe had a match-high six blocks as well as six kills.

"We always want to get our middles involved in our offense and we hadn't been too effective with that in the last couple of matches so we wanted to establish them early,'' Patrick said.

With the loss, Mississippi State dropped to 6-20, 2-13.

Tennessee is host to Alabama at 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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