Grome came into the match Friday night trailing Madison Lilley, a current assistant coach at Kentucky, by 50 assists and Grome recorded 51 assists in the match with her pass to Brooklyn DeLeye in the fourth set to break the school record as she now has 4,963 for her career.
With Friday night’s win, Kentucky advances into next weekend’s NCAA Regional Semifinals, which will be hosted by the highest-remaining seeded team in Kentucky’s quadrant of the bracket. If No. 1 overall seed Pittsburgh and No. 2 seeded SMU both lose this weekend, Kentucky would be the host institution next weekend.
The matches next weekend will either be Thursday and Saturday or Friday and Sunday. The NCAA and its television partners ABC and ESPN will announce the designations for which regionals are which day on Sunday once all the first and second round matches are completed.
Kentucky hit .324 in the match with three players reaching double-figure scoring led by Brooklyn DeLeye, who had 22 kills on 49 swings. DeLeye was joined by Erin Lamb, who had 13 kills on 28 swings and Megan Wilson trickled into double figures with 11 kills on 27 swings in the match. Both middles for Kentucky had solid nights with Jordyn Dailey going errorless on nine kills and Brooke Bultema logging eight terminations for the UK offense.
Brooke Bultema had a monster night on defense, going for a new career-high seven blocks including a key solo stuff in the middle of the third set. Bultema had a dig and was responsible for 12 points in the match as one of Kentucky’s best players on the night.
Kentucky is now into its seventh regional semifinal in the last eight seasons and 14th regional semifinal in program history. UK will play the winner of (7) Missouri and SMU in the next round.