Lady Vols' response a winner

Facing its first deficit of the day and its first adversity of the tournament, Rob Patrick's Tennessee volleyball team didn't waste time finding a response Saturday night against Virginia Tech.

Trailing 12-9 in the second set, the 19th-ranked Lady Vols went on a 16-5 run to take the set and eventually the match, sweeping the Lady Hokies in three sets (25-18, 25-17, 25-21) to win the Comcast Lady Vol Classic championship.

"We weren't serving very tough (in the second set)," Patrick said. "They were able to control the serve and run their offense right back at us. And any team that does that, especially one as good as Virginia Tech, they're really going to score some points.

"Our team responded extremely well. We got a little bit more on our serve and it took them out of their pace, out of their offense. And we were able to take advantage of some of their miscues.

"I was proud of how our team responded."

Tennessee (3-0) continued the run into the third set, where the Lady Vols opened an 8-1 lead before forcing a Virginia Tech timeout. The Lady Hokies never got closer than three points.

The Lady Vols didn't lose a set in three matches in their season-opening tournament. Tennessee swept Xavier Friday night and Chattanooga Saturday afternoon. The 1,307 in attendance for the win over Virginia Tech was the fifth-largest in school history.

"With the way college volleyball is, and the parity that's going on, you're going to be happy with any win, and we had three really good teams," said Patrick.

Tournament MVP Nikki Fowler paced the Vols with nine digs and 10 kills. Kayla Jeter also had 10 kills in the match.

"It was a good weekend to start playing teams, and not just ourselves," Fowler said. "It was a good showing of what we can do and improve on stuff."

"(The second set) was a good testament to our team. We didn't get down - everyone stepped up and played big."

Tennessee never trailed in the first set. Fowler had five kills and a pair of digs and Dee Dee Harrison recorded five kills in seven attempts for a .714 kill percentage for the Lady Vols.

Harrison and Leah Hinkey were named to the All-Tournament team.

Tenn. def. Chattanooga 25-20, 25-11, 25-13: Tennessee worked around a slow start to sweep Chattanooga 3-0 in the afternoon session.

"Chattanooga's a good team and they're going to play very, very hard," Patrick said. "What I was frustrated with was that we weren't taking care of the ball on our side of the net."

Fowler led the Lady Vols with 12 kills and 10 digs. Harrison added 11 kills and three digs.

"We missed four or five serves in the first set. We hit seven balls (out of bounds) in the first set. So right there we probably gave (Chattanooga) half their points," Patrick said.

"We're going to make some errors, but too many of them were uncharacteristic errors."

Freshman Carly Sahagian had 12 digs and seven kills in her first extended action as a Lady Vol. Sahagian saw limited time in UT's win over Xavier.

"Our serving was a little bit off today, until the third set. But when we did get the serve in we did a pretty good job of defending it," Patrick said.

Virginia Tech beat Xavier in five sets in Saturday's early game. Xavier beat Chattanooga in three sets Saturday.

Grant Ramey is a freelance contributor.