Sept. 23, 2001
Columbia, SC – Up 2-0, No. 19 South Carolina fell 2-3 to No. 10 Florida in front of the largest crowd in school history tonight, featured as the SEC-TV Match of the Week on Fox SportsSouth. USC falls to 6-1 and 0-1 in the SEC, while the Gators move to 5-1 and 1-0 in the SEC. USC hosts Georgia on Sunday, Sept. 23 at 2 pm. The match will again be on uscsports.com.
Game scores were 30-24, 30-28, 17-30, 24-30 and 11-15. USC saw 1,783 walk through the turnstiles, breaking the previous school record (11/18/00 -1,582 v. Florida).
USC was led by Cally Plummer, who hit .255 with 20 kills, 12 digs and two digs. Yajaira Cadet hit .205 with 15 kills, two digs and two block assists. Setter Megan Hosp had 54 assists and 16 digs. USC hit .144 in the match to UF’s .259. UF tallied 12 team blocks to USC’s six.
“We didn’t control what was happening on our side of the court games one- five enough. We let Florida back in by making mistakes in game three,” said USC Head Coach Kim Christopher. “Florida is a very good team. You can’t make serving or passing errors against them. I felt like we followed our game plan at times and then let Florida control our side of the net at other times. I am proud of the way we competed and I while it’s disappointing to lose this type of match, we learned a lot about ourselves tonight.”
In game one, the two teams tied it up twice, before USC took over at 4-4 on a kill by Plummer and ace by Nadia Sefferovich. USC went up 15-10 on another Sefferovich kill, but made four straight errors at the Gators tied it up at 16. The two teams knotted it up at 17 and 19 before USC took the lead for good on a kill by Sefferovich. USC went up 28-23 on a kill by Niece Curry and then won game one on a service error by UF. USC hit .105 to UF’s .000.
USC never trailed in game two. USC went up 5-1 on Gator errors and then took a 14-12 lead on two UF errors. The two tied it five separate times before USC went up 20-19 on a Sefferovich kill. Plummer and Berna Dwyer put up a wall for a team block to take a 25-21 lead. USC went up 29-24 on a kill by Cadet and then won game two on a UF hitting error. USC hit .303 while UF hit .278.
Game three USC took a 5-1 lead before UF went on a run to take a 10-17 lead on an ace. UF won game three 16-30, hitting .342 to USC’s .022.
Game four Florida went up 11-2 before USC battled back to get within on a UF error, making it 21-20 Gators. USC rallied again to within three on two straight USC kills, making it 27-24 UF. Cadet hit the ball into the net and the Gators took game four 30-25.
USC ran out to a 4-1 lead on smart play before the two teams tied it up at 5 and then UF went ahead 10-16. Plummer knocked down two kills to make it 8-11 UF. USC got within three on a kill by Cadet, but UF’s Aury Cruz hit her 28th kill of the night to take the game and the match, 15-10.
