UK volleyball has sights set on national title

Published 2:28 pm Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Kentucky won its only volleyball national championship in 2020 but coach Craig Skinner’s players believe they have the potential to win another national title this season.

“I think it’s a hard thing to do but we’re ready to do it this year,” junior liber Molly Tuozzo said. “We’ve already put in so much work and we had the great opportunity to get all of our transfers and freshmen here in the spring and we used that time to grow closer to each other and play for each other.

“We are all so bought into each other and the team that it’s a super exciting year for us. I think we’re not done yet and we just want to keep getting closer and eventually win a national championship.”

Marquette transfer Molly Berezowitz had a sister, Maddie Berezowitz, on UK’s national championship team.

“It’s not going to go perfect. There’s going to be setbacks, but how can we come back from that and have that goal in mind that we want to win the national championship,” Berezowitz said.

Kentucky has won or shared eight straight Southeastern Conference titles. League coaches picked UK No. 1 in the preseason poll and sophomore Asia Thigpen said winning the conference is also important to the team.

“Our expectation this season is to win the SEC championship, both the tournament and the (regular season). I think you check that off and we want to go for a national championship,” Thigpen said.

Returning players got to learn from UK assistant coach Madison Lilley, the nation’s outstanding player when UK won its national championship.

“Mads talked to us about what that looked like in practices,” Thigpen said. “She talked about how every day, it was just competing. She stressed the importance of winning every single drill and then everyone’s roles are super important.”

Skinner doesn’t mind the national championship talk and aspirations. He even admitted he put the schedule together with that in mind.

“Do we schedule tough because we know we have some great players and have a chance to end the year competing for a national championship?” Skinner said. “It is what we typically do, maybe even a little bit tougher, all four of the Final Four teams from last year are on our schedule. But I do not feel like we will get to where we want to go if we don’t play these teams.”