Eva Hudson, right, celebrated after UK won the SEC championship Sunday. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Kentucky dominated the Southeastern Conference this season finishing 15-0 with road wins at Texas A&M and Texas, who finished second and third in the conference. Kentucky was 7-0 in road conference matches and seven of the 15 conference wins were three-set sweeps.
So it was no surprise that Kentucky swept the SEC regular season awards Wednesday voted on by the league coaches.
Eva Hudson was named the SEC Player of the Year and SEC Newcomer of the Year after transferring from Purdue where she was one of the best players in the Big Ten.
Hudson is the seventh-different Kentucky player to win SEC Player of the Year. Current teammate Brooklyn DeLeye was the 2024 winner. Before that winners were Emma Grome (2022), Alli Stumler (2021), Madison Lilley (2020), Leah Edmond (2018, 19) and Sarah Rumley (2008).
Hudson is Kentucky’s first-ever winner of the Newcomer of the Year award, which was established in 2023 by the league office.
She averaged 4.76 kills and 2.26 digs per set this season and had 10 or more kills in all 15 SEC matches.
Setter Kassie O’Brien won SEC Freshman of the Year honors which was no surprised based on the way she dominated SEC weekly honors. She led the conference with 11.8 assists per set and directed Kentucky to a .296 in-conference hitting efficiency percentage. She also averaged 2.26 digs per set.
O’Brien is also the seventh different player in UK history to be SEC Freshman of the Year. The six prior winners of the award all went on to become SEC Player of the Year award winner.
O’Brien and Hudson were joined on the All-SEC First Team by DeLeye, a junior who averaged 4.65 kills and 2.26 digs per set. She also had 10 or more kills in every SEC match, including 22 against Missouri.
Kentucky junior libero Molly Tuozzo made the all-conference second team. It’s her second straight year to earn all-SEC honors. She averaged 3.81 digs per set and had 10 or more digs in 13 of the 15 conference matches.
O’Brien was also voted to the eight-member SEC All-Freshman Team.
Obviously Craig Skinner was SEC Coach of the Year after leading the Cats to a ninth straight conference championship and second unbeaten SEC season — the first was in 2018. It was his seventh time to win the award, including the last three.
Kentucky will be the No. 1 seed in the SEC Volleyball Tournament and open play in Savannah, Ga., at noon Sunday against either Auburn, Oklahoma or Arkansas in the quarterfinals.
Skinner has been the Kentucky coach since 2005 and now has a 490-156 career record. That means from 2005-2025 UK has won about 75 percent of its matches. In the last nine years UK is 217-47 — an 83 percent winning mark.
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The only awards not won by UK were SEC Libero of the Year that went to Maya Sands of Missouri and SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year that went to Jackie Moore of Vanderbilt.
