On Saturday, No. 2 Stanford women’s volleyball defeated No. 11 Kentucky 3-1 (25-19, 25-19, 28-30, 25-20) at home. Stanford junior outside hitter Elia Rubin led the way for the Cardinal with 21 kills and eight digs while sophomore outside hitter Jordyn Harvey had nine kills. Kentucky outside hitter Brooklyn Deleye was the top performer for the Wildcats with 17 kills. Stanford improves to 8-1 overall while Kentucky falls to 6-5.
BOX SCORE: Kentucky at Stanford-Saturday, September 21st
“Well I thought we came out playing at a really high level,” Stanford head coach Kevin Hambly said after the match. “Like what did we hit? We hit .333. And then I thought in that second set, that we kinda played a little sloppy. We had a big lead early and we just kinda, we relaxed a little bit and then it felt like it was dangerous for us going into that third because they were getting some confidence and we weren’t really fighting for points and let them back in it and they win that third set and then we’re in a battle and I do think we played really really well at the end and kinda played more to our level towards the end of the game and you saw us hit .379 in that, but like, I think a little disappointed on our fight there the middle parts of that in two and three.”
“We’re not super happy with the way that we played and the way that we came out,” Elia Rubin admitted. “We’ve been looking to find our identity all season and I think we kinda came out flat a little bit and we were making a lot of errors. It wasn’t really the team that we want to be, but a win is a win. So we’re stoked that we were able to pull it out against a really good team who gave us some troubles.”
The opening set was tight as it was tied 9-9 after Jordyn Harvey got two straight kills for Stanford followed by kills from Emma Grome and Megan Wilson for Kentucky. Stanford then went on a 4-0 run to lead 13-9. Three of those four points came from errors by Kentucky while Sami Francis got a kill for the Cardinal. From there, it was smooth sailing for Stanford as they would lead 18-12 after a kill by Rubin and go on to win the set 25-19 after back-to-back kills from Rubin and Harvey.
In the second set, Stanford jumped out to a 4-1 lead after a kill and service ace from Rubin. After a kill by Brooklyn Deleye made it 5-3, Stanford went on a 5-0 run to lead 10-3. All five of those points coming from Kentucky errors. Stanford would lead 16-10 after a kill by Lizzy Andrew that was assisted by Kami Miner. Kentucky then went on a 3-0 run to make it 16-13, but Stanford bounced back to win five of the next six points to lead 21-14. From there Stanford would take the set 25-19 as a service error by Kentucky ended the set.
The third set was back and forth all the way. After it was tied 6-6, Kentucky won three of the next four points to lead 9-7 before Stanford won three points in a row to lead 10-9 after which Kentucky tied it up 10-10. After a service ace by Harvey, it was tied up 21-21. Stanford had their chances to get the sweep as they led 23-22 following a service ace by Rubin.
However, Kentucky kept finding ways to stay in the set, leading 24-23 before Sami Francis had a kill for Stanford to tie it up 24-24. It remained back and forth as it was tied 28-28 after both teams traded kills. Kentucky finally won two points in a row to win the set 30-28 as Stanford had back-to-back errors.
“I think we kinda just backed down,” Rubin said of letting that third set slip away. “We weren’t showing the fight that we want to show and they’re a good team. They’re not going to give up and just back away and they battled. And we kinda just let up and we didn’t do the things that we were talking about we wanted to do. So, I mean they came out strong, but we also were making a lot of errors that we shouldn’t be doing.
“You know, every game we take it as a learning opportunity and we get back and work on the things we need to work on and I think yeah, we’re just each day we’re getting closer and closer to who we want to be as a team at the end of the year. Yeah.”
The fourth set looked good for the Cardinal early as they led 7-2. Taylor Yu had a pair of service aces and Ipar Kurt had a nice kill. After three straight kills from Rubin, Andrew, and Kurt, Stanford led 10-3. It looked like Stanford would cruise to an easy fourth set victory. However, that wouldn’t be the case. Stanford led 16-13 after a kill by Kami Miner after which Kentucky won four points in a row to lead 17-16.
Stanford then won three straight points to go up 19-17 as Miner and Rubin each had a kill while Kentucky had an attack error. Kentucky would not lead in the set again as Stanford eventually put them away, closing out the set 25-20 as Francis got the match-clinching kill off an assist from Miner.
While this match didn’t go quite as smoothly as Stanford wanted, it’s a still a 3-1 win over a team that was ranked just outside the top ten. In that sense, there really isn’t too much for Stanford to complain about. They were clearly the better team all night long and Elia Rubin was simply sensational. She’s clearly taken her game up a notch and is more than capable of being the feature player of this Stanford team.
“She carried us, helped us out in the back row,” Hambly said of Rubin. “Ipar was struggling a little bit to score, hitting zero. The rest of them were pretty good. As far as attacking. Everyone else was pretty good, but I thought Elia had to carry a huge load for us, which we really don’t want her to carry that big of a load. We’d like some other people to help out. We need to get our middles going just a little bit more and something we’ll work on here in the next week.
“We need to pass a little bit better, which is tough and then have some courage and get teams to come off the net a little bit and Kami has. We just haven’t had a chance to train. We’ve just been playing so much like to kinda lose the connection on that. We need to get back to working on that connection and get after it a little bit.”
“We’ve been working hard in practice, my connection with Kami, just trying to be available for her at all times,” Rubin said of her performance. “Also lot of, we’re passing off the net a lot so a lot of those balls came from out of system. We’re still trying to get in system a little bit more so we can establish more of a spread out offense. But yeah, 21 kills is good. But you gotta do what you gotta do.”
A big thing that helped Stanford pull through was their service pressure. They had seven service aces to Kentucky’s four. That’s an area Kentucky is used to winning and so for Stanford to out-serve them really took away something that Kentucky takes a lot of pride in.
“I think we’re two of the better serving teams in the country going at it,” Hambly said. “And there’s a lot of out of system play. So I think they serve aggressive, we serve aggressive, it was tough. I mean DeLeye was ripping that jump toppy and it was giving us some trouble, but Taylor went back and hit a couple really good ones as well. Taylor Yu. So, I think it was two really good serving teams and putting a lot of pressure on each other.”
For the second straight home match, Stanford had a strong crowd out. It wasn’t as packed as it was against Texas, but there were still a lot of people in attendance. Several football players, basketball players, and soccer players came out to show support, making for a fun atmosphere as school is set to start this upcoming week.
“It was awesome to see the student section,” Hambly said. “It was awesome to see the crowd coming in full. Like 3800, that’s a good number for us and having the Texas match where we had over 7,000 and this match. We’re averaging something like 5,000 right now. That’s amazing. So, pretty exciting to see people are coming out and following us. It means a lot to these athletes. It’s nice to have a good crowd at home.”
“Yeah, I mean it’s awesome,” Rubin echoed. “It’s so nice to see Maples lively. Especially, it’s a pretty late game right now and so just to see Maples firing is so awesome and it makes us feel so good to just have that home crowd and all the other teams supporting us. It’s nice to see everyone is back on campus finally. All the students and all the athletes. So it’s not just the fall sports here and so it was really nice. It was great to have the support. We could feel it for sure.”
As for Kentucky, a disappointing result, but they fought hard. Their biggest issue is they just don’t seem to have figured out how to beat teams that are ranked ahead of them. They seem kinda pigeonholed where they are and they need to find way to take things up a notch. One thing they do have going for them is the fact that they have Brooklyn DeLeye. Stanford has a lot of respect for her and what she brings to the Wildcats program.
“Yeah, I think she’s pretty special,” Hambly said of DeLeye. “She’s an All-American candidate and she should be. I think she’s in that list of players of the year and she absolutely should be. We knew it was going there and we couldn’t stop her. I thought early I thought we did a really nice job of managing her because she was hitting around zero or a hundred and then third and fourth, she got loose and did a really nice job.”
“Yeah, she’s a great player,” Rubin added. “We knew that coming in. She was gonna be taking a lot of big swings. Especially in the big moments. She did just that and she was executing at a really high level. So, yeah we could have stopped her a little bit more, but we knew going into it she was going to be a big hitter that we needed to stop.”
Up next for Stanford is a road match at Notre Dame on Friday, September 27th. That will be at 3:30 PM PT on ACCNX and be their first match of ACC play.
“We had a pretty tough pre-conference schedule and we came out 8-1, which is pretty solid,” Rubin said. “But everything we do is just to prepare for the end of the year and the postseason. So, yeah. We like our tough schedule to start it off because we get to see all the opponents that we’re hoping to see in the final four, in the elite eight, whatever it may be. So, yeah.”
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