On Wednesday in his pre-NCAA Tournament media opportunity, Kentucky volleyball head coach Craig Skinner talked about how his team needed to handle what was in front of them without looking too far forward. Skinner cited examples of teams in other sports overlooking a seemingly overmatched opponent, only to lose to said opponent.

On Thursday night, Skinner’s Wildcats did not let anything like that happen, as Kentucky cruised to a three-set sweep over Cleveland State in the first round of the 2024 NCAA Volleyball Tournament. The UK head coach was pleased with his team handling their immediate business.

“Always pleased to have the ability to play well enough to advance in the tournament,” Skinner said. “(Cleveland State head coach) Chuck (Voss) is a good friend of mine and I’m proud of him and their team for getting to this point, they weren’t picked to win their league so the chance they got out is awesome. I thought our team did a good job of producing offensively and holding Cleveland State attackers to a low percentage.”

Kentucky got off to a quick start in the match, something the Cats wanted to do, according to sophomore Brooklyn DeLeye, who led everyone with 15 kills in the match.

“I think we just knew that we had to jump from the start,” DeLeye said. “You can’t really start a game off coming in soft. I mean, we knew they were going to come out swinging, and that’s kind of what they did, but I think we did a really good job of stopping that and just playing our game and not letting the tournament really affect us.”

The UK serve game forced Cleveland State into a lot of out-of-system possessions in the match. In addition to Kentucky’s eight service aces, it was constant pressure from the service line that gave the Vikings problems, according to outside hitter Erin Lamb.

“We knew they were a good passing team, and their libero is very good, so we knew that we would have to bring it, and they have a couple of heavy arms, so we knew that serving was going to be key,” Lamb said. “We’ve been working on it really hard over the whole season, and just kind of sticking to what we do, knowing that we can apply pressure and take care of business.”

The Cats came out hot and never looked back. Kentucky won the first two points of the match and quickly built a 9-2 lead. UK would win the first set 25-15.

In the second set, Cleveland State actually took an early 4-2 lead and the Vikings hung with the Cats until a 6-0 run gave Kentucky a 17-10 lead in a set they would eventually win 25-14.

The third set started much like the first, with the Cats building an early 9-2 lead. UK would end up winning that set 25-16.

With the win, Kentucky advances to Friday’s second round, where they will face Minnesota. Skinner knows the Golden Gophers are a very talented squad.

“I know they are a good team and they’ve got great wins this year,” Skinner said. “Tomorrow they are going to hit the ball extremely hard and they are going to put some tough serves on us. They’re a team of streaks, they score a lot of points in a row, and they can give up some points and I think that’s been shown all day today in the NCAA tournament.”

That’s the next step for the Cats, who handled the first step on Thursday night with a sweep of Cleveland State.