Pressure, Served Blue

(LEXINGTON, Ky.) — Sometimes you can want something so badly that wanting it becomes part of the problem.

Kentucky volleyball got a firsthand lesson in that Sunday afternoon.

More than 6,000 people had packed Historic Memorial Coliseum. Louisville was on the other side of the net. ABC was carrying the match nationally. There were rankings and postseason implications, along with the usual emotions that surface whenever Kentucky and Louisville get together in anything more competitive than a spelling bee.

Kentucky wanted to win badly.

Maybe that was part of the problem.

“In the first set, for us, it kind of personally felt like we wanted to win so bad, we kind of forgot the process of winning,” Asia Thigpen said afterward.

There was a lot packed into that answer because, for most of the first set, Kentucky didn't look much like the team that had spent the early part of this season beating ranked opponents and collecting frequent-flyer miles. The Wildcats never led. They made too many hitting errors, struggled offensively, and generally looked like a team trying very hard to win a volleyball match instead of simply playing volleyball.

Louisville was happy to help make things worse.

The Cardinals took the opening set 25-19 and very nearly took the second. Kentucky was hanging by a thread in the second set, with the uncomfortable possibility of going down two sets to none staring everybody in the face. The Wildcats somehow survived 29-27.

From there, everything changed.

Kentucky won the next two sets, 25-21 and 25-19, and the match, 3-1. But what interested me most wasn't that the Wildcats had beaten Louisville. It was how they managed to get from looking so uncomfortable early to looking so much like themselves later.

There was no Knute Rockne speech between sets. Craig Skinner didn't overturn a table or unveil some brilliant tactical adjustment that he had been saving for just such an occasion. He reminded his players of something considerably less dramatic.

“I think our team just did a really good job of staying in the moment as the match went on, especially after the first set,” Skinner said.

Staying in the moment is one of those things that sounds ridiculously easy when somebody else tells you to do it. Don't worry about what just happened. Don't think about what might happen next. Concentrate on what's directly in front of you.

That’s easy enough when you’re sitting in a yoga class breathing deeply with meditation music playing softly in the background. These women were being asked to do it with Louisville across the net, 6,000 people screaming around them, and a national television audience watching to see whether they could keep the second set from slipping away.

Brooklyn DeLeye said the important thing was that Kentucky didn't back away from what it had been trying to do offensively. The Wildcats had struggled in the first set, but they kept swinging aggressively because against a team as good as Louisville, taking something off the ball would only invite more pressure.

Interestingly enough, Louisville coach Dan Meske saw essentially the same thing from the other bench. Kentucky remained aggressive in the biggest moments while his own team occasionally became passive.

That's where the match turned.

Earlier this season, Skinner talked repeatedly about comfort being the enemy of greatness. Kentucky had spent plenty of time playing from ahead. Sunday presented the other side of the equation.

What happens when you're behind? For a team accustomed to making opponents chase it, Kentucky suddenly had to do the chasing.

Thigpen said the team had recently talked about the difference between trying to win and trying not to lose. That's a subtle distinction until you're actually standing on the court with the score tied in the 20s. When you're ahead, protecting the lead can make you tentative. When you're behind, wanting the result too badly can make you impatient.

That's what made Thigpen's comment about forgetting “the process of winning” so revealing. After the first set, Kentucky went back to the mundane stuff. Execute the free balls. Side out. Communicate. Make the right hitting choice. Trust the teammate next to you.

And keep swinging.

Skinner has talked all season about composure, presence and staying in the moment. I asked him afterward whether composure can still be taught at this point in a team's development or whether you simply have it or you don't.

“You can't really teach that type of environment or pressure or stress from other teams,” he said. “The more you experience it, the better you get at handling it and dealing with it.”

You can talk about it all you want. Eventually, however, somebody has to serve the ball at 27-all.

Kentucky did.

Which explains why Sunday may ultimately be worth more to Kentucky than another comfortable sweep.

The Wildcats finished with 73 kills in four sets, while six Kentucky players posted career or season highs. Skinner thought setter Cassie O'Brien became noticeably better as the match progressed. He could see the belief returning to her eyes.

By the end, the same crowd and circumstances that may have contributed to all that early emotion were feeding the Wildcats instead.

Skinner called the victory “a huge moment” for the program. He mentioned the sold-out crowd, the ABC audience, the rankings, RPI, NCAA Tournament implications and the possibility that thousands of people who had never watched Kentucky volleyball before had just seen the Wildcats perform on national television.

All of that matters, especially for a program still trying to grow the sport and its audience.

But I suspect what happened at 29-27 in the second set may matter more to Skinner once December arrives.

Kentucky is going to trail again. There will be another night when the opponent is playing better, the ball isn't falling where it should, and winning starts to feel important enough that the desire to win gets in the way of actually doing it.

Now these Wildcats have been there.

They found out Sunday that composure isn't pretending the pressure doesn't exist. It's remembering the process of winning when the pressure makes you want to forget it.

Dr. John Huang is a retired orthodontist, military veteran, and award-winning author. He currently serves as a columnist for Nolan Group Media and invites readers to follow him on social media @KYHuangs. His latest book is Whining for Posterity, available on Amazon.