Five years ago, Kentucky volleyball got to the very top for the first time and won the national championship. Claiming league titles with ease, but since the national championship, Kentucky has struggled in December, not getting to the Final Four since winning the championship.
This season, making it back to the very top has a high possibility. Maybe because of one player.
Maybe because of the player Kentucky didn’t even know it absolutely needed until she arrived.
Eva Hudson walked into the Wildcats’ gym last summer with a resume already lined with accolades from her Purdue career. With high expectations for her senior season, she wanted one thing, something Purdue hadn’t delivered and something Kentucky desperately wanted back — a national title run.
Through months of dominance, clutch performances and instant chemistry that transformed Kentucky’s offense, Hudson has positioned the Wildcats right there again.
The numbers alone say plenty. Hudson has hammered down 482 kills and added 247 digs, anchoring Kentucky on both sides of the court. Her performance placed her on the national radar as a semifinalist for Player of the Year. Statistics only tell a fraction of what she has meant to this team.
Head coach Craig Skinner talks about how important Hudson’s impact is to this team.
“I give these two (Hudson and junior Brooklyn DeLeye) a lot of credit for carrying the offensive load and bailing us out of some situations, which was huge,” Skinner said.
The number of times this season Hudson has picked up the load for the Cats’ offense shows why she was the perfect piece to get in the transfer portal.
The two Skinner referenced, Hudson and junior outside hitter Brooklyn DeLeye, have morphed into one of the most explosive duos in college volleyball, a tandem that can tilt matches.
Their chemistry has taken only months to get perfect, but they look like they have been playing with each other for years.
The two had 57 combined kills against No.8 seed UCLA to advance to the Sweet 16 on Friday.
For DeLeye, having Hudson on the opposite pin is as calming as it is energizing.
“No, it’s amazing being able to have these pressure situations, and knowing that she can put a ball away, and she has my back, and I have her back,” DeLeye said.
“So I think it really takes the pressure off of us in these big moments. Because, I mean, she can swing away and then I’ll come front row.”
DeLeye often complements Hudson as one of the best players in the country, as if watching her play from across the court is still occasionally unbelievable.
Their rhythms align, their confidence grows off each other and opposing defenses have discovered that trying to stop one only seems to unleash the other.
Hudson feels that synergy, too.
“She’s just an amazing teammate, and we kind of just go off of each other, like she talked about,” Hudson said. “But it’s really hard for teams against us, because I feel like across the whole board, we’re versatile in everything that we’re doing, you never know who we’re going to set, and if we set any of those people, you know they’re going to get a kill in that moment.”
That unpredictability is Kentucky’s most dangerous weapon.
Her ability to take over matches appears almost effortless from the outside. She calls it something simpler, and that’s getting in her flow state.
“We like to call it a flow state,” Hudson said after defeating UCLA in the NCAA Tournament. “It feels like everything you do just goes right, and, when you see the other one going off, it’s like, Oh, well, that seems fun. So that’s kind of my mentality.”
When she enters that flow, Kentucky follows. Her confidence radiates across the court, lifting the middles, the right sides, even setter Kassie O’Brien, who now has the luxury of setting Hudson, leading to her SEC Freshman of the Year award.
DeLeye says the connection they share didn’t have to be built, and that it was there right when she got to Kentucky.
“I think it was kind of just natural; we clicked right away,” DeLeye said. “It’s just been really fun to have someone like Eva in the gym every single day to push me. And I think it just helps us on the court as well, because even tonight … she was getting kills like crazy, and then I just wanted to do my part to help her out.”
That instinct — to match each other, to elevate each other — is what makes Kentucky suddenly feel like a national contender again. When Hudson rises, DeLeye rises. If one of them has an off day, the other picks the other one up.
There’s no guarantee in college sports — not in December, not even for conference champions stacked with talent. But this talented team, with one of the best players in the country, has a chance to make history.
Eva Hudson could be exactly what Kentucky needed. If she keeps playing like this, the Wildcats might once again play until the very last whistle of the season and win another national championship.