MADISON – UC Davis is far from a national power like Wisconsin volleyball’s first two opponents have been.
Kansas is now No. 15 in the country despite the loss to the Badgers, and Texas is No. 2. Both have impressive track records in recent seasons as well.
But UC Davis – 1-2 before the Sept. 4 match against the Badgers, with the losses coming to Pepperdine and UTEP – still gave the Badgers quite the challenge before Wisconsin emerged with a three-set win, 25-23, 26-24, 25-15, on Sept. 4 at the UW Field House.
BOX SCORE: Wisconsin 3, UC Davis 0
“I was proud of how we stayed with it and with each other and grew as the match went on,” Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield said. “That’s kind of the idea of this. Every team presents some different challenges. Their speed and how hard they played was a big part of who that team is.”
Here are three takeaways from the three-set sweep that did not always look so easy:
Digging out of second-set deficit
Wisconsin was certainly not in a comfortable position in the second set, falling into a 16-8 hole after eking out a 25-23 win in the first set. The 16-8 deficit followed an 8-0 UC Davis run in which the Badgers had five attack errors.
“Their speed was beating us at the nets,” Sheffield said. “We were adjusting that as the match was going on. I thought the beginning of the second set, they were playing harder than what we were.”
Then the Badgers’ attack finally started to click. UW went from trailing 16-8 to tying it at 19-19 and ultimately taking the set at 26-24.
“We got into a pretty big hole, and you got a choice of how you’re going to respond to that,” Sheffield said. “I thought we started playing harder, we started getting a little bit more touches on the block.”
Madison Quest, a freshman who starred at Divine Savior Holy Angels, was a key part of Wisconsin’s second-set comeback. She subbed in after not appearing in the first set and had a string of four consecutive serves that eventually led to UW points.
“She came in and did her job,” Sheffield said. “This is a team that not everybody is going to be on top of their game every night. We have a lot of confidence in whoever does come in that they’re going to be prepared and give us a lift. I thought she did, and I thought Aniya Warren did the same thing.”
Sheffield did not need to say much to his team between the second and third sets to keep the momentum going, as the Badgers jumped to a 6-0 lead and never let it get any closer than five points after that en route to a 25-15 set win.
“We’re a team of very competitive people,” Wisconsin middle blocker Carter Booth said. “So Kelly knows how to push our buttons. He came in and he said, ‘They’re out-playing you. That’s all we needed to hear — because they were, they were. And that’s never going to be acceptable to any of us.”
Grace Egan does a little bit of everything
Ohio State transfer Grace Egan made an impact in a variety of ways in the Badgers’ second win of the 2025 season.
Her 10 kills against UC Davis were the second-most on the team, trailing only Mimi Colyer. Egan also was notably more efficient than Colyer with a .368 hitting percentage compared to Colyer’s .237.
She also had three service aces – as many as the rest of the Badgers combined, and three times as many as UC Davis had – without any service errors.
“It was a world-class serve that you guys saw tonight,” Sheffield said. “A couple things were amazing to me. No. 1 is she had that at 100% in, which is really hard to do. In some of those serves, how the heck they were able to handle even a handful of them was remarkable.”
Sheffield has noticed Egan serving in recent matches with “a whole lot of confidence.”
“And when you’ve got a jump server with an arm like her feeling it, a string of points can happen in a hurry. … We got quite a few people that are able to get a run of serves, but man, it’s fun to watch when she lights it up.”
Alicia Andrews has another efficient night
Alicia Andrews, a 6-foot-3 middle blocker who transferred from Baylor, had another impressive showing in the Badgers’ third match. She had eight kills without any attack errors and hit a team-best .727. She also had three block assists.
Both Andrews and her coach did not let the lack of attack errors go unnoticed afterward.
“Allie did not make a hitting error,” Sheffield said in his opening statement of his press conference before going into any other details of the match.
“Correct, I did not make an error,” Andrews added.
It was the second time in three matches in which Andrews had eight or more kills without any errors. She had the same numbers in the Aug. 29 season opener against Kansas. She hit .571 in the five-set win against the Jayhawks.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin vs UC Davis takeaways: Badgers surge after early woes
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