Kentucky Set to Take on Every Final Four Team from the Year Prior in Quest for a Second National Title

We're just about two months out from the start of the 2025 women's college volleyball season, and the Kentucky Wildcats officially know who they'll be suiting up against as they begin their quest for a second National Title. And as he has for much of his tenure in Lexington, Kentucky head coach Craig Skinner has lined up yet another monster schedule as the Cats are set to take on all four Final Four teams from last year's NCAA Tournament.

Kentucky will begin the season with an exhibition match against Ohio State on August 23 inside Historic Memorial Coliseum in its lone tune-up game before the season officially begins on August 30 against Lipscomb. The Cats' first real test of the young season will come the day after, however, as they take on the Nebraska Cornhuskers in a noon match on ABC at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee as a part of the inaugural Broadway Block Party. The Cats' match is the first game of a triple header in Nashville that will be followed by Tennessee taking on Purdue on ESPN2 and Illinois clashing with Vanderbilt on SEC Network. The Cornhuskers will look a little different this season, though, as legendary coach John Cook announced his retirement from coaching following the conclusion of Nebraska's season last year. But the leader on the sidelines will be a familiar one for Cats' fans, as former Louisville head coach Dani Busboom-Kelly begins her tenure as the head coach of the Cornhuskers. 

Kentucky won't have any time to catch its breath, however, as it will then travel to State College, Pennsylvania for a clash against the defending National Champion Penn State Lions on September 5 followed by a match against New Hampshire on September 6. 

The road trip won't be quite complete there as the Cats will leave Pennsylvania and travel to Fort Worth, Texas for a matchup with the Pittsburgh Panthers on September 10 as a part of the ACC/SEC Challenge set to air on ESPN at 6:30 pm. The Panthers are coming off a fourth-straight Final Four appearance, the most recent of which came by defeating Kentucky in a 3-0 sweep in the Elite Eight last season. 

To round out the non-conference schedule, Kentucky will return home for a pair of matches on September 13 and September 14 against SMU and Houston respectively, followed by the annual Bluegrass Battle on September 18 as the Cats travel to Louisville, Kentucky for an in-state battle against Louisville. The Cards finished last season as runners-up in the NCAA Tournament and will be led by Dan Meske in his first season running the ship after spending the last eight seasons as the associate head coach for the Cardinals. Finally, Kentucky will return home for one final match before conference play begins as they host another NCAA Tournament team from last season, Washington, on September 20. 

But while many may look at the Cats' schedule as a daunting challenge, especially with a new setter set to run the offense, Kentucky is excited for the opportunity to play with the best the sport has to offer and sees it as an opportunity to examine how they need to play to have success throughout the rest of the season. 

"I think for us it's all about just learning our system and what works well for us," assistant coach Merideth Frey said. "For example, with a younger setter, do we need to run it maybe a little bit slower to the pins or should we continue to try to work through the fast? What sort of routes can we run in the middle?"

Those opportunities, especially in past seasons when the matches may have resulted in losses, are often what have propelled Kentucky to long-term success as they navigated the remainder of the season because they provided the team with invaluable game experience and film to help break down the strengths and weaknesses that presented themselves in matches against elite competition. 

"I think it's just more of a conversation knowing that if we can hang, compete, have really good moments, good rallies when we play those really good teams, once we do video with them and help remind them of, 'Hey, look at this. This is what we wanna do more of and we didn't have a lot of moments like this and that's why we lost.' So I think we've done a really good job of debriefing matches with them and showing them, 'Hey if we do more of this, this will result in a win. When we do things like this, this is where we fall apart.'"

That mindset is no different this time around, as Frey and the rest of the coaching staff approach each of these matches as learning opportunities for a team hoping to make some serious noise in the NCAA Tournament. And with this schedule awaiting them, they will certainly have plenty of chances to demonstrate just how good they could be.