Kassie O'Brien, center, celebrates with UK teammates. She has 312 assists, 54 digs and 24 blocks for No. 3 Kentucky. (UK Athletics Photo)
Kentucky freshman setter Kassie O’Brien was named the Southeastern Conference’s Setter of the Week after helping UK sweep South Carolina and Georgia last week to open conference play.
She had 40 assists against South Carolina and came back with 34 against Georgia — an average of 12.3 assists per set in those two matches. Kentucky hit .353 combined in the two matches.
O’Brien also had 13 digs and four blocks to go alongside her 74 assists in the two matches.
Remember O’Brien was not the starting setter when UK opened the season. That was redshirt sophomore Ava Sarafa. However, O’Brien got the starting job after UK’s win at Penn State. However, Sarafa has still been an instrumental part of the team as she came into the match at Louisville in the fourth set with UK down 2-1 after O’Brien had leg cramps and helped the Cats really to win.
That’s been a change for Kentucky coach Craig Skinner who started Madison Lilley every match for four years and then had Emma Grome start every match for four years. Both were All-Americans and Lilley was national player of the year when UK won its only national championship.
Kentucky assistant coach Kyle Luongo is in his first year with the Wildcats but knows UK was “blessed” to have Lilley and Grome for eight straight years at setter on SEC championship teams.
“Setter is an important position to have great clarity and continuity. The goal is not to continue to shuffle players and switch on a whim or match my match because in essence that’s like that would be the equivalent to a quarterback switching in and out,” Luongo said. “You don’t really want to do that and potentially disrupt the flow and the rhythm of the offense.”
The Kentucky assistant said players normally settle who emerges as the starter.
“Honestly, they’ve handled it really well,” Luongo said. “Obviously that’s not an easy position to be in but Ava came in at Louisville when Kassie had leg cramps and we absolutely dominated the last two sets. So they have made it tough on us which is a huge credit to them. I work with them a lot and it’s been a very healthy competition.”
Luongo appreciates the way the two teammates celebrate each other’s success daily
“They still want to be the one out there, but I am proud of how they deal with that because that’s a challenging position to be in,” Luongo said. “Ultimately it would make our jobs a lot easier if one of them just truly separated from the other. But to their credit, they’re making it tough on us because they are both very, very special players.”
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Kentucky plays at Ole Miss Friday at 7 p.m. EST. The match will be televised on SEC Network and the ESPN app with Alex Loeb and Shelby Coppedge on the call.
