The Southeastern Conference’s divisional leaders will square off on Friday night in Oxford, Miss., when No. 1 Florida takes on Ole Miss. Opening serve in the Gillom Sports Center is slated for 8 p.m. ET and the match will be carried live on WRUF Sports Radio 850 with Tom Collett.
Florida (19-1, 12-0 SEC), which is riding a 14-match winning streak, is looking to post its 20th consecutive 20-win season on Friday evening. The Gators lead the overall SEC race by two matches with a 12-0 conference record. Ole Miss and LSU follow with 10-2 league records, while Tennessee is fourth with an 8-4 conference mark.
“Ole Miss is a team that’s undefeated at home and in a good position to win the SEC West,” Florida head coach Mary Wise said. “This is the best Ole Miss team we’ve ever played, and facing them at home in a tough environment on Friday night will really be a challenge. If we serve and block well, then we have a chance to win on the road.”
The Gators are coming off a 3-0 win against South Carolina in a primetime Wednesday night showdown on ESPNU. Senior outside hitter Callie Rivers (Winter Park, Fla.) led the way for the Gators, recording a match-high-tying 11 kills on 21 swings with no errors for a .524 hitting efficiency to complement a career-high-tying four service aces and five digs for 15.0 total points. The Gators hit .323 for the match, marking their third consecutive match hitting better than .300 as a team, and limited the Gamecocks to just an .057 hitting efficiency.
As a team, Florida ranks in the NCAA’s top 25 in three statistical categories. The Gators are 16th nationally with a .280 hitting efficiency, rank 21st in service aces with 1.77 per set and 25th in blocks per set with 2.63. Florida leads the SEC in both blocks per set and service aces per set and is the only team in the SEC to have three players rank in the league’s top-10 individually in service aces.
The Gators are led offensively by junior right-side/setter Kelly Murphy (Wilmington, Ill.), who is the only player in the SEC (all matches combined) to rank among the league’s top-10 individually in service aces per set, hitting percentage and kills per set. Murphy averages a squad-best 3.23 kills per set, which ranks 10th in the SEC, on a .376 hitting percentage, which ranks fourth in the conference. Murphy is the SEC’s leader in service aces with 0.38 per set. She also averages 5.44 assists per set, 2.15 digs per set and 0.70 blocks per set.
Junior outside hitter Kristy Jaeckel (Littleton, Colo.) and Rivers follow with 2.44 and 2.29 kills per set, respectively. Rivers is second on the team with 2.36 digs per set and ranks second in the SEC with 0.36 service aces per set.
Senior libero Erin Fleming (Orlando, Fla.) heads Florida’s back-row effort, ranking eighth in the SEC with 3.62 digs per set, while freshman setter Chanel Brown (Tempe, Ariz.) averages a squad-best 5.52 assists per set.
The Gators have three players averaging 0.90 blocks per set or better, led by junior middle blocker Cassandra Anderson (Bakersfield, Calif.) who ranks third in the SEC with 1.16 blocks per set. Senior middle blocker Lauren Bledsoe (Long Beach, Calif.) follow with 1.00 blocks per set, which ranks ninth in the SEC, while sophomore right-side Tangerine Wiggs (Seattle, Wash.) adds 0.90 blocks per set.
Florida and Ole Miss meet for the 41st time in the history of the two programs with the Gators holding a 37-3 lead in the all-time series. UF is 31-0 all-time vs. the Rebels under the direction of Wise, as Ole Miss is one of four teams that she has never lost to during her tenure at Florida. The Gators are 16-3 all-time against Ole Miss when the match is played in Oxford, Miss. Twenty-one of the last 23 meetings between the two teams have been 3-0 Florida sweeps.
Ole Miss enters Friday’s match with a 16-5 overall record and a 10-2 mark in SEC play. The Rebels, who have won seven consecutive matches, are coming off a pair of wins against Mississippi State and Alabama on the road last weekend. Three of Ole Miss’ five losses this season have come to ranked opponents, including a 3-0 win by the Gators on Sept. 26, but the Rebels have posted quality wins, including a 3-0 sweep of No. 12 LSU on Oct. 15 in Oxford.
Ole Miss is led offensively by sophomore outside hitter Whitney Craven, who averages a squad-best 3.17 kills per set and is second on the team with 2.63 digs per set. Senior middle blocker Regina Thomas and sophomore right-side Allegra Wells follow with 2.50 and 2.49 kills per set, respectively.
Junior libero Morgan Springer ranks second in the SEC with 4.81 digs per set, as the Rebels lead the league with 16.24 digs per set (all matches combined). Thomas and Miranda Kitts, rank second and eighth, respectively, in the SEC in blocks per set with 1.20 and 1.05 per set, making Ole Miss and Florida the only two teams to have two players apiece in the league’s top-10 individually in blocking.
Sophomore setter Amanda Philpot is the reigning SEC Offensive Player of the Week after registering her first career triple-double against Alabama last Sunday. She ranks sixth on her team with 7.37 assists per set.
Complete results and a recap of Friday’s match will be available at GatorZone.com.
For all of the latest information on Florida volleyball, please log on to www.GatorZone.com/volleyball. Follow Florida Volleyball on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GatorZoneVB and Coach Mary Wise on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GatorMary.
QUICK NOTES
· Florida, which enters Friday’s match with a 19-1 overall record and a 12-0 Southeastern Conference mark, will be looking to post its 20th consecutive 20-win season dating back to 1991.
· The Gators are ranked No. 1 in the nation for the third consecutive week and for just the eighth time in program history. Florida was ranked for five consecutive polls during the 1996 season and UF holds a record of 17-1 all-time when playing as the nation’s top-ranked team.
· Florida is ranked among the AVCA’s top-25 poll for the 300th consecutive week, marking the nation’s fifth-longest active streak in consecutive polls ranked. The Gators have been ranked in every poll since Sept. 17, 1991.
· The Gators check in at No. 1 in the latest RPI ratings for the fourth consecutive week.
· Head coach Mary Wise, in her 24th season as a collegiate head coach and her 20th directing the Gators, became just the 16th NCAA Division I women’s volleyball coach ever to pick up her 700th career victory. Wise is 703-131 (.843) in her 24th season as a Division I head coach, with her first four years coming at Iowa State from 1981-84, where she tallied a record of 81-63 (.563). Wise is the 16th-winningest Division I volleyball head coach all-time and the eighth-winningest active coach.
· The 2010 campaign marks the 27th season of Florida volleyball (beginning 1984). The Gators are 778-168 (.821) all-time in program history.
· The Gators lead the SEC (all matches combined) in both blocks per set (2.63) and service aces per set (1.77). Florida is the only team in the SEC to have three players rank in the league’s top-10 individually in service aces.
· Two Florida players are nearing the 1,000-kill plateau for their careers, something that just 16 players in program history have accomplished. Junior right-side/setter Kelly Murphy has 901 career kills, which ranks 22nd in school history, while junior outside hitter Kristy Jaeckel has 820 career kills, which ranks 25th in school history.
· Murphy leads the nation with five triple-doubles so far this season and has a school-record 20 triple-dips in her Florida career.
· Murphy ranks ninth on Florida’s all-time career assists list with 1,756 career dishes. Accomplishing that in just 82 career matches is an impressive feat, considering she has spent all but six matches of her collegiate career setting in just three rotations as part of a 6-2 offensive scheme.
· Murphy is the SEC’s only player to rank in the league’s top-10 individually in service aces (1st - 0.38 per set), hitting percentage (4th - .376) and kills per set (10th – 3.23 per set) simultaneously.
· Jaeckel is just the 20th player in school history to reach 2,000 career attacks and now has 2,174 career attacks through 81 career matches, which ranks 16th all-time in school history.
SEC VOLLEYBALL STANDINGS (AS OF OCT. 28, 2010)
Eastern Division
| Team | Overall | SEC |
| Florida | 19-1 | 12-0 |
| Tennessee | 17-5 | 8-4 |
| Kentucky | 11-11 | 5-7 |
| Georgia | 11-12 | 3-9 |
| South Carolina | 5-17 | 2-10 |
Western Division
| Team | Overall | SEC |
| Ole Miss | 16-5 | 10-2 |
| LSU | 19-2 | 10-2 |
| Auburn | 16-8 | 7-5 |
| Arkansas | 10-13 | 4-8 |
| Mississippi State | 11-11 | 3-8 |
| Alabama | 9-12 | 1-10 |
FRIDAY’S SEC MATCHES
Alabama at Arkansas – 8 p.m. ET
Auburn at Tennessee – 7 p.m. ET
Florida at Ole Miss – 8 p.m. ET
Georgia at Kentucky – 7 p.m. ET
Mississippi State at LSU – 8 p.m. ET
WEDNESDAY’S SEC RESULTS
Florida 3, South Carolina 0 (25-20, 25-17, 25-13)
Tennessee 3, Louisville 1 (17-25, 25-23, 25-22, 28-26)
