Arkansas surprises No. 21 Tennessee in volleyball

The evening began with a short video highlight tribute to Tennessee's 2011 SEC volleyball championship.

If there is a 2012 highlight video, don't look for any excerpts from Friday night's 3-1 loss to Arkansas.

The Razorbacks snapped a nine-match losing streak to the Lady Vols, winning in Thompson-Boling Arena for the first time.

"Did this just happen?'' said an Arkansas staff member courtside.

It did. The No. 21 Lady Vols won only the second set, 25-20, and were on their heels the remainder of the evening.

Arkansas (10-3, 1-1 SEC) claimed the first set 25-21, and dominated the final two by identical 25-17 counts.

Tennessee (8-4, 1-2 SEC) had no answers.

After going 19-1 last year to earn the program's first outright SEC crown, the Lady Vols have already lost twice — first at Missouri, now on their home court to a team they were supposed to handle.

"We're not ourselves right now,'' said setter Mary Pollmiller. "It's all on our side (of the net). It's nothing any other team is doing to us.

"We should have beat them outright in three (sets) if we were playing the way we need to play.''

Virtually everyone of note is back from last year's championship season. Injuries to DeeDee Harrison and Shealyn Kolosky have hurt Tennessee's efficiency at the net.

"We're not really comfortable,'' coach Rob Patrick said. "We're still trying to find the right combinations.''

Arkansas recorded 16 blocks to Tennessee's six.

Patrick rolled his eyes at the 10 service errors and 30 hitting errors.

"They had 16 blocks,'' he said, "and I'll bet half of them were balls that we were just tipping to get 'em out of system, not kills. We just couldn't get the ball where we needed to.''

Getting the ball to Kelsey Robinson is always a desirable plan. However, the 2011 SEC player of the year was effective only in the second set, when she had eight kills and only two errors.

Robinson had only one kill in each of the final two sets. She even sat out a good portion of the third set and finished with 14 kills and 11 errors.

"Kelsey is working her tail off,'' Patrick said. "She's carried us. Kelsey gets to have a bad game, she does.''

Tiffany Baker had 15 kills, one more than Robinson. But on a

funky, frustrating night, who's counting.

"I don't want to take anything away from Arkansas,'' Patrick said. "They played well.

"But it was all on our side of the net.''

Pollmiller hit a personal milestone, joining the 2,000 assist career club early in her sophomore year. She didn't seem to enjoy it much under the circumstances.

"This team doesn't feel right,'' she said.

"We didn't lose any of our main players from last year so it's very frustrating because it's the same girls out there on the court.

"So we've got to figure out what's going wrong and fix it if we want to get to where we need to be.''

Tennessee needs to be back at Thompson-Boling Sunday against South Carolina.

Follow Mike Strange at http://twitter.com/strangemike