Oct. 24, 2004
Columbia, S.C. – South Carolina volleyball went 0-2 for the weekend as the Gamecocks fell 3-0 to the eighth-ranked Florida Gators Sunday afternoon at the Volleyball Competition Facility. The Gators took the match 30-16, 30-22, 30-21 and improved to 18-2 and 10-0 in the SEC. USC falls to 11-8 overall and 4-6 in the SEC. Shonda Cole led the Gamecocks with 11 kills, marking her 16th match this season that she has recorded double figure kills.
“We tried a different line up today and I liked how we looked but Florida is a great team and we had too many errors,” said head coach Kim Hudson.
The Gamecocks recorded 32 kills and had 30 errors in 126 attempts to hit .016 for the match, while Florida posted 45 kills and 15 errors to hit .283. In game one, USC was held to .000 hitting as they recorded 11 kills and 11 errors. Despite rallying back early in the game to tie it 6-6, the Gamecocks were never able to push forward. Florida took the lead again on a kill by Michelle Chatman and allowed the Gamecocks to score only 10 more points in the game.
Carolina came out aggressive in game two and managed as much as a five-point lead to go up14-9. USC started things off with a service ace by Katelyn Panzau and proceeded to score six points off of kills in their run. The Gators then held USC at the 14-point mark and went on an 8-0 run including back-to-back kills by Chatman to tie and take the lead for Florida. Despite the lead in game two, the Gamecocks produced their worst hitting game of the match with 11 kills and 12 errors to record a -.020 percentage.
Game three was all Florida as the Gators held Carolina to 21 points and .075 in hitting. UF connected on 17 kills to hit .297. The Gamecocks’ Lauren Ford was empty in the blocks column until game three when she connected on two block assists, the lowest for Ford since Sept. 29 against Tennessee.
The Gamecocks have now lost two straight matches and will return to the road this week as they travel to Tennessee on Wednesday and Kentucky on Sunday.
