Kelly Murphy Continues to Have Stellar Year

Senior right-side setter Kelly Murphy earned her 27th career triple-double in a loss to Kentucky on Sunday, yet she is still one of the top candidates for the Lowe's Senior CLASS Award, which honors both her amazing on-court performance and her academic excellence.

Murphy, an elementary education major, believes that passion is crucial to both her athletic and academic success.

"I definitely wouldn't be good at volleyball or my classes unless I loved doing what I do," Murphy said. "It''s an important year for me, my senior year. I'm not sure if I want to follow my old friends and go pro or go to grad school, because I really think it would help others if I pursued teaching."

Murphy, now in her senior season, has been named the American Volleyball Coaches Association Player of the Week at least once in all four seasons of her career, being one of very few to have earned that honor. In addition, she tops off her career with having earned numerous national awards over the past three years, including National and SEC Freshmen Player of the Year. She has been named AVCA All-American the past three seasons, and her most recent triple-double is her ninth of this season alone.

"I'm so grateful for everything that's happened," Murphy said. "I remember, Coach [Mary] Wise showed up personally once and I talked to her back when I was in high school, and she said she believed she had faith in me with her program."

After that, she knew where she would be attending college, Murphy said.

The most recent loss to Kentucky, in spite of Murphy's triple-double, does not bog her down.

"I mean, it's obviously not enjoyable to come out and know your entire team is playing hard and still lose," Murphy said. "But still, it just means that no matter how far I've come personally in all these years, there's still room for improvement."

The Lowe's Senior CLASS Award will be announced at the end of normal-season play next month, and Murphy is one of the top three candidates to win the award.

Former Gators Lauren Bledsoe and Callie Rivers, from the 2010 team which won Florida's 12th SEC title, who Murphy is still in active contact with, also graduated to go professional. Murphy definitely has professional-caliber skills, so it will be interesting to see where her career path takes her.

Student Athletes Now to Receive Compensation

The NCAA this week has approved a vast number of reforms brought before it. In one of the biggest issues in years, the NCAA has deemed it possible for conferences to indirectly pay student athletes for their contributions in the sport.

For years, proponents of paying student athletes argued that it was unfair for schools to pocket all the revenue earned from sponsorship, advertising, boosters, athletic grants and ticket sales. Athletic scholarships varied in size, but the largest would only pay for a student's tuition and board. Medical costs were diagnosed and paid by sports faculties.

The argument against paying student athletes is that it belittles the nature of friendly competition, sets the wrong ideals for impressionable youths in college, and is possibly unfair to others who cannot afford to attend colleges even with some scholarships without taking on great financial risk.

Now, however, one of the reforms the NCAA passed earlier this week has granted the ability for athletic scholarships to be awarded to athletes up to $2,000 in excess of the cost of tuition and board. Put simply, this now means that student athletes could earn up to $2,000 extra per semester for playing in a national sport for a school.

Under, Title IX rules, schools must equally distribute additional funding of the scholarships between men's sports and women's sports. While some of the larger schools will be able to defer money between its teams with relative ease, smaller schools and non-BCS schools will have a harder time being able to afford to pay the option of extra scholarship money. This in itself causes another problem.

Student athletes previously had to consider which universities to attend based on program preferences, academic standing and other lifestyle choices. Now, however, the question of which schools will be able to dole out more money can have a very possible likelihood of factoring into where some premiere high school students choose to go to college.

Florida Times-Union reporter Michael DiRocco believes this aspect of the reform can have another adverse effect.

"Especially with recent conference realignments, the new reform can lead to increased conference realignment because some schools will want to move to conferences with larger athletic expenditures," DiRocco said.

Amidst the grumblings of college students who fear of losing traditional football rivalries due to conference changes, this could potentially be a new problem, he said.

"It's much too early to tell," DiRocco said. "To actually see the effects the reform will have on athletes and even schools changing, we might well have to wait a year or two."

The NCAA passed these reforms to deflect light from some of the controversy it's faced in recent years, but the potential drawbacks of the new reform could open a new can of worms.

SEC Defeat

Ghosts. Goblins. Ghouls.

Nothing scares the Florida Gators women's volleyball team. Unless, of course, you're a Lady Volunteer or Wildcat. 

The falling No. 17 Gators were humbled this weekend in conference play as they dropped two straight to now No. 13 Tennessee and No. 15 Kentucky, dropping Florida to 17-5 on the season, 10-3 in the conference, and third in the division. Unless both Tennessee and Kentucky drop a couple of the few remaining games before the tournament, Florida is likely out of the race for conference champion.

Florida's play on Friday at Tennessee lacked the offensive tenacity they've come to be known for over recent years. After winning the second set 25-17, they dropped the next two sets to lose to the Lady Vols 3-1. 

Above, Junior right-side hitter Tangerine Wiggs

Junior right-side hitter Tangerine Wiggs, who helped stuff Tennessee in the second set, said the team just couldn't get into rhythm. 

"We tried to adjust to their playing style," Wiggs said. "We changed formations, we substituted players, we tried to use our height to stuff them at the net. It's really disappointing to lose to this team again in a month."

Tennessee is the only conference rival the Gators have been unable to defeat at least once this season. They also accomplished something no other teams, not even the top-ranked teams in the invitationals at the start of the season, have done. They outhit the Gators for the entire match, limiting Florida's effectiveness.

Senior right-side setter Kelly Murphy came out Sunday to face Kentucky and played spectacularly. With 15 kills, 13 digs and 24 assists, she notched the 27th triple-double of her career. Yet even with her performance, the Gators fell in a hard-fought 3-2 match. The fifth and final set started out with nine ties in the score, with each team earning a point successively until the Wildcats blew the set open with six unanswered points.

While the Gators got back into offensive rhythm, outhitting the Wildcats .276 to .227, the Wildcats won out in the end with 65 kills to Florida's 64. The game came all the way down to the wire in the fifth set. 

The Gators returned Monday and will begin preparing for Alabama and Ole Miss, the latter of whom will be played in honor of Homecoming this weekend.