Kansas Volleyball stops Baylor win streak

Saturday afternoon prior to Late Night in the Phog, the Kansas Volleyball squad (13-2, 2-1) took on a solid Baylor team (14-5, 2-1); the Jayhawks emerged victorious in a 3-1 victory.

Baylor has been having a solid season and found themselves receiving votes in the most recent AVCA Top 25 poll.

The Bears took it to the Jayhawks early, taking the first set 25-22. It felt like Baylor was really dominating the match in the first set, yet Kansas remained within striking distance the entire time. But the Jayhawks weren’t about to go down without a fight, taking the second set and absolutely dominating the third set to take a 2-1 lead. The fourth set was much closer, with neither team leading by more than three at any point, and Kansas was able to prevail.

Observations

I wish someone would ask Bechard what’s going on with all of the service errors. Kansas gave Baylor 12 free points yesterday a week after giving Texas 10 points on service errors. Is it a result of being aggressive and going for aces? I just don’t know. What I do know is that it is frustrating to watch.

We saw good Kansas, bad Kansas, and amazing Kansas in the match against Baylor. This probably isn’t a fair comparison, but so far they just haven’t been as consistent as last year’s squad. That third set was something to behold. It was 10-2 before you could blink. Then 15-5. KU ended up taking that set 25-13. It’s what the Jayhawks are capable of, and it’s what they should be showing against most Big 12 teams.

The volleyball team made local headlines by kneeling before the national anthem for a moment of silence (pictured above), in their words, “to reflect on social injustice in today’s culture.” Head coach Ray Bechard addressed the media after the match. From KUAthletics:

It's been something our team has had a lot of dialogue about. Our team is as diverse as any volleyball team in the country. We all come from different backgrounds, but we still know what it's like to treat each other the right way -- be compassionate, be tolerant of views. The team thought -- what a great message to send. They did not want to disrespect the (national) anthem in any way, shape or form, so that is why they chose the timing of it. They all said, we all love our country and love our flag but is there some way we can challenge everybody in the gym today just to be a little better when it comes to decisions we make about other people and how we treat each other. Each of them will have an individual action plan that they can carry out to improve the Lawrence community moving forward."

Up Next

Kansas travels to Ames, Iowa for a matchup with Iowa State on Wednesday evening, Oct 5. The match will be televised on Fox Sports Net at 6:30 PM, so tune in!

KU will return home on Saturday, Oct 8 against Texas Tech. The 4 PM match will be shown on JTV and ESPN3.