The volleyball team finished the regular season with a 10-5 record in conference play and earned a double bye in the SEC tourney as the No. 4 seed.

No. 19 Tennessee, 19-6 overall, wrapped up with home victories against Arkansas and Oklahoma and won three out of their last four, including at Vanderbilt, to nip Florida, which finished 9-6 in the SEC, for the fourth seed.

Sunday’s senior day match marked 150 career wins for coach Eve Rackham Watt.

Mackenzie Plante posted a career-high four aces, plus nine kills, six digs, three assists and one block. Starr Williams tallied a season-high 19 kills with three blocks and a dig and had the best answer when asked what she was seeing on offense.

“I saw nothing. I just saw court,” Williams said in a post-game interview that can be watched HERE with a few clips of her eye-popping hits. “See ball. Hit ball. That’s what I’m trying to do. I try to look before I go into the play. I’ll look who I want to hit and then I just hit.”

Senior libero Gülce Güçtekin made a season-high eight assists, plus 12 digs and one ace. Redshirt senior middle blocker Klaudia Pawlik notched a season-high six blocks with three kills.

The Lady Vol seniors and their families, from left, Gülce Güçtekin, Brynn Williams, Klaudia Pawlik, Hayden Kubik and Keondreya “Kiki” Granberry. (Tennessee Athletics)

“We have such a talented senior class that has experience, who’s been out there, and they’ve really invested in this season and where they want to be,” Rackham Watt said. “I think each of them came into this season as really good players, but what’s been great is they’ve come in every day trying to improve.”

The SEC volleyball tournament, which hasn’t been played in 20 years, will be held Nov. 21-25 in Savannah, Georgia, at Enmarket Arena.

With the double bye, the Lady Vols will play Sunday, Nov. 23, at 2 p.m. Eastern and await the outcome of Alabama and South Carolina on the first day with the winner meeting Florida, which earned a single bye, on the second day. Info about the tourney and the bracket can be found HERE.

The top three seeds in the SEC tourney are Kentucky, Texas A&M and Texas. The entire tourney will be broadcast on the SEC Network.

SOCCER

The soccer team’s season ended in the first round of the NCAA tourney last Friday in a rematch against defending national champion North Carolina.

The Lady Vols scored first with a goal by junior forward Kate Runyon in the first half. The Tar Heels led 2-1 at halftime and quickly scored in the second half for a 3-1 lead, and Tennessee was on its heels the rest of the way.

Coach Joe Kirt and seniors Ally Brown and Mac Midgely handled an emotional post-game press conference.

“This group has brought this program to a place it’s never been before, and when you’ve had a program for going on 25 years, that’s not easy to do,” Kirt said.” “We’ve had a lot of incredibly talented players come through here, some of the best in the world, that haven’t accomplished what they did this year. There’s other teams that have gone further, certainly in the postseason, and that’s something that we fell short of this year, which we expect better of ourselves, and this program deserves better.

“But what this group has done, some of it is measurable, but a lot of it isn’t. What they invested, the culture that they’ve built is remarkable, and this business is about people, it’s about winning games, but the relationships and the standard they’ve set for how this program is going to operate, I’ll be forever grateful to them and their class for that.

“They’ve truly left their mark on this program, and it’s our job to take it forward to another new place it’s never been, and that’s what we’re out here every day to do, and that’s the best way we can honor this class.”

The Lady Vols finished the season with a 12-4-3 record overall, including going 7-1-1 at home, were ranked in the top 25 all season and reached the No. 1 spot in the United Soccer Coaches poll for the first time in program history.

“Mac and I both have been here since freshman year,” Brown said before breaking down.

“I can go,” said Midgely, who spoke through the tears. “This program has been probably the biggest blessing in my life – the team, the culture, the coaches, everything you could ask for. Allie and I have been here since our freshman year. We’ve stuck it out. There’s been a lot of ups, lots of downs, but we always said we wanted to leave the program better than we found it.

“That’s the thought process for all of us seniors leaving. There’s a lot of us, and we made history this year in a lot of ways. Obviously, we would like to go further, but it wasn’t in the cards for us. I think Tennessee is going to be great. I’ve seen Joe, obviously his first year was our freshman year, and we’ve seen him grow in a lot of ways as a head coach, and the way he leads this team is amazing. He’s probably the best coach I’ve ever had. I love Tennessee soccer.”

“It’s a special place,” Brown said. “I think the relationships we built over the four years and the coaching staff, I think it’s very special, something I will never take for granted.”

The post-game video can be watched HERE.

BASKETBALL

The Lady Vols will be on the road this week with a matchup Thursday, Nov. 20, at Middle Tennessee State at 7:30 p.m. Eastern in Murfreesboro. The game will be livestreamed on ESPN+.

The Lady Vols are 3-1 on the season, and this will be the third game on the road. Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell wanted her team to be tested earlier this season – the Lady Vols didn’t have a true road game until December a year ago – so she would have better information about where her team was in November.

It’s been an eye-opening experience, especially for the freshmen, who already have a big adjustment from high school to college and now are doing so in an unfamiliar offensive and defensive system. Practice helps, but live games that count yield the best information.

“Absolutely. That’s why we played it,” Caldwell said. “That’s why we did it is to figure it out and figure it out early because I do think when you look back at our body of work last year, we figured this out late February. We had a stretch of games where we kind of figured some things out, and it was too late to learn if you don’t play hard, it doesn’t work. If you take bad shots, it doesn’t work.

“You don’t learn it early. We’re learning it now.”

Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press and a 10th anniversary edition will be released June 16, 2026.