Kiune Fletcher Earns SEC Offensive Player of the Week

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The Southeastern Conference announced its weekly award winners Monday afternoon. Gamecock senior Kiune Fletcher was named the SEC’s Offensive Player of the Week, it is the first weekly honor of her career and the second overall this season for South Carolina. The recognition came after a career-highlight week in which she compiled 51 kills  and hit .481 over two games.

It started Saturday night at Mississippi State, where she hit .476 with 26 kills in just three sets to sweep the Bulldogs on the road. It is the most kills in a three-set match in NCAA Division I this season and was the second-most kills in a three-set match in program history, behind only Shonda Cole’s record of 27 set against Georgia on Nov. 15, 2006. The last Gamecock to have 25 or more kills in a match of any length was in 2017.

She followed that up with 25 more kills in a five-set loss against LSU on Sunday, also hitting .486 and adding a pair of solo blocks. Fletcher is the first Gamecock since Juliette Thevenin in 2013 to post 25 or more kills in back-to-back matches. The last Gamecock to do so in SEC play was Shonda Cole in 2006. The Trinidad and Tobago native averaged 6.38 kills over eight sets for South Carolina, on the way to compiling two of the five highest kill totals of any SEC player this season. Thanks to just the two matches, Fletcher raised her season average for kills up from 2.20 to 2.77 and her season hitting percentage up from .211 to .262.

It will be just a single match coming up in week nine of conference play, the Gamecocks will head to Athens for a rematch with Georgia coming up on Friday, Nov. 17. It will be a 7 p.m. first serve on SEC Network+. Follow @GamecockVolley on Twitter/X and @GamecockVB on Instagram for continued updates on the team throughout the season.