By Lauren Rosenberg

The no. 25 Missouri Tigers extended their winning streak to two after defeating the visiting Tennessee Volunteers Sunday afternoon.

The Volunteers traveled to Columbia looking to come back from a crushing 0-3 defeat at home in Knoxville at the hands of the no. 16 Kentucky Wildcats. 

The Tigers looked to continue their win streak after defeating the Auburn Tigers 3-1 at Auburn. 

Missouri couldn’t have asked for a better start to the game. Leketor Member-Meneh started the set off with a service ace. Danielle Mahaffey responded with a kill for the Volunteers, but that didn’t stop the Tigers.

Missouri went on a nice 3-0 run thanks to kills by Dariana Hollingsworth-Santana and Kylie Deberg, but then Tennessee scored and the scoring flipped.

Missouri stopped the flip-flop to go on a 6-0 scoring run to give the Tigers the highest lead of the game by a score of 17-10. Deberg recorded two kills and one service ace in the run.

The Volunteers tried to fight back, but the Tigers held onto their momentum and took set 1 with a score of 25-14. 

Tennessee got the first two points of set 2 through an attack error by Hollingsworth-Santana and a kill by Lily Felts. The beginning of this set had a similar flip-flop nature: when one team scored, the other one followed.

Then, Missouri started to gain momentum. Member-Meneh had one kill and Kayla Caffey accounted for three kills, one block and another kill to start a 3-0 run with a score of 12-7. 

Tessa Grubbs stopped Missouri’s run with a kill, followed by a kill by Deberg. Then, Morgahn Fingall responded.

Tennessee’s efforts to stay in the set shattered when Missouri went on another 3-0 scoring run with kills by Hollingsworth-Santana and Deberg. They started to flip the score until Missouri ran away with the set by a score of 25-16 after Asha Phillips handed it over with a service error.

Tennessee wasn’t ready to go home with a second straight sweep and weren’t going down without a fight. They got the first two points of set 3 after Member-Meneh had a service error and Alyssa Andreno recorded a kill. After Deberg got Missouri on the board, Tennessee went on a 4-0 scoring run due to attack errors by Deberg and Hollingsworth-Santana sandwiched between kills by Grubbs and Alyssa Andreno. 

After another Volunteer scoring run, the Tigers started to look alive and recorded kills by Tyanna Omazic, Caffey and Member-Meneh to tighten the gap to three with a score 0f 18-15. 

The score continued to flip-flop until Tennessee pulled away to avoid the sweep and take set 3 on a 2-0 run with a kill by Grubbs and, in beautiful fashion, a service ace by Sedona Hansen with a score of 25-18.

Service aces were prominent throughout the whole match and set 4 was no different. Tennessee got its first point through a service ace by Felts. Deberg responded with a kill and, going on with the trend, the score continued to flip. Member-Meneh recorded two straight kills, followed by two straight kills by Caffey and a kill by Hollingsworth-Santana to give Missouri a 5-0 run and bring the score to 10-6.

Hansen responded with a kill of her own, but Missouri went on a 3-0 run with kills by Hollingsworth-Santana and Deberg. 

Another 3-0 scoring run with kills by Deberg, Hollingsworth-Santana and Omazic extended the score to 16-9. 

The Tigers would end set 4 strong with a 3-0 scoring run off of a kill by Omazic and two attack errors by Raquel Perinar and Fingall to secure the set win with a score of 25-14 and the match.

Missouri prevailed and defeated Tennessee at the Hearnes Center 3-1.

Missouri travels to Fayetteville, Arkansas to take on the Arkansas Razorbacks on Friday, October 25.

Edited by Emma Moloney | ehm3gd@mail.missouri.edu