And it ends.
A season full of elevated expectations is over.
No. 8 seed UCLA women’s volleyball (19-13, 12-8 Big Ten) fell to No. 1 seed Kentucky (27-2, 15-0 SEC) in a four-set thriller in the second round of the NCAA tournament Friday night at Historic Memorial Coliseum in Lexington, Kentucky.
“I’m proud of our team for the match we played tonight, certainly for the run we had in this tournament,” said coach Alfee Reft. “I’m proud of how we went about our process in this tournament and what we built this year, especially (sophomore libero Lola Schumacher and sophomore setter Kate Duffey) sitting with me and what they mean to the movement of this program.”
The Bruins displayed grit throughout the contest.
UCLA entered the third set with its back against the wall after dropping the first set by two points and the second by nine. But the Bruins held on, posting their highest clip of the match with a .362 tally featuring six kills from Leverette.
The Bruins entered Friday as the clear underdogs against the No. 2 overall seeded Wildcats. But as demonstrated in their Nov. 14 matchup against Nebraska, they’ve proven they can challenge any team.
And senior outside hitter Cheridyn Leverette and UCLA once again came alive with the match on the line.
The two-time First Team All-Big Ten honoree led the way in the final game of her collegiate career, posting 22 kills on a .294 clip – her fifth time this season achieving over 20 kills in a match.
Freshman outside hitter Eliana Urzua posted 11 kills on a .333 hitting percentage. And redshirt junior middle blocker Marianna Singletary continued her tear from the first round of the tournament, posting 15 kills on a .367 clip. Singletary closed out the season with double-digit kills in the final six matches.
Although defense has been the Bruins’ backbone this season, it became their fatal flaw Friday night. UCLA posted 52 digs with Schumacher reaching 20 of her own, but they could not contain Kentucky’s offense.
The Wildcats posted a team hitting percentage of .400 on 77 kills. Kentucky’s outside hitter duo of Brooklyn DeLeye and Eva Hudson posted 30 and 27 kills, respectively.
“Physically, they’re (DeLeye and Hudson are) playing on a different level,” Reft said. “Regardless of where alignments were, they were just playing at a height that you couldn’t touch and block. And then their vision and their tool kit, their ability to hit every angle record, is pretty impressive.”
The Bruins fell flat following a 58-point battle in the first set, posting their lowest team clip of the night with .194 on 13 kills and six attack errors.
But they once again proved they cannot be counted out.
“The second set definitely started to slip away from us, and that pissed us off,” Duffey said. “We came back in the third set with a little bit of fire, which I think fueled us a little bit into that third set. It was a win or go home set for us, so we were definitely playing with that on the line.”
The Bruins have been plagued by service errors all season long, struggling to limit them as a squad. It was a bright spot for the team tonight, however, as they only produced five service errors to the Wildcats’ nine and maintained a constant pressure on the Kentucky defense.
“To be honest, I’ll give some credit to UCLA for that because they were serving some bullets at these guys,” said Kentucky coach Craig Skinner. “(The serves) created tough rhythm because some of them were low, some of them were high, some of them were off – and so it was really hard to get offensive rhythm with a quick attack.”
The Bruins’ 39th NCAA tournament appearance and first in the Reft era showed what they are capable of. Leverette is the only graduating member from Reft’s starting lineup this season, which will allow for team development before the 2026 campaign.
