Cal Poly volleyball’s Cinderella story ends with 3-0 sweep at NCAA tournament

A week ago, Cal Poly players were celebrating in Los Angeles after upsetting USC to punch a ticket into the Sweet 16.

On Thursday, they were fighting for their lives to hold on against the nation’s No. 2 team in a roaring Kentucky arena.

The joy of last weekend met the reality of elite competition, and Kentucky swept the Mustangs 25-18, 25-19, 25-7 to slam the door on their Cinderella run.

The Wildcats ended a journey that saw Cal Poly play 10 sets in 28 hours and fly across the country in search of another upset.

Cal Poly entered the Sweet 16 with the odds stacked against them, and Kentucky made those odds feel real.

The opening set stayed tight until Kentucky broke away in the final points.

It was the first time Cal Poly had dropped a first set in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

The Mustangs didn’t look rattled, though. They answered with their strongest stretch of the match in the second set, opening with a 5-2 lead and keeping the margin within reach before falling 25-19.

For a brief stretch, Cal Poly looked like the same team that stunned two ranked opponents last week. Players were smiling after long rallies and the bench kept believing the magic would hold. At 12-12, they still looked capable of pushing the top seed.

But from the moment the score tied, the match turned sharply.

Kentucky broke the deadlock and took control with a service rotation that pushed its lead to 16-12. Cal Poly tried to stem the run with substitutions and a timeout, but the Wildcats kept finding clean swings while forcing the Mustangs into out-of-system attacks.

“On film, the hardest thing to assess is serving, and I thought they served the toughest serving match of any team we’ve played this year,” head coach Caroline Walters said at the press conference.

The third set became the breaking point. Down just 5-3, Cal Poly needed a spark, but Kentucky extinguished any hope almost immediately.

The Wildcats ripped off eight straight points behind Trinity Ward’s serve, turning a manageable deficit into a 13-3 hole. Two aces, several transition kills and a pair of Cal Poly attack errors swung all the momentum.

Soon it was 16-4, then 22-5, then 23-6. The Mustangs were unable to mount a comeback as Kentucky closed the match with the same dominance that has carried it to nine straight SEC titles.

The 8-0 scoring run exposed the issues Cal Poly fought all night — tough passing lanes, limited clean swings and a block that struggled to slow Kentucky’s balanced attack. It’s what turned the final set into a one-sided finish and sealed the end of a historic postseason run.

“They just pushed pace, and then they would catch you off guard with their drops and just clogging the routes for the middles,” London Haberfield said. “They were just so effective in the way that they chose who to serve and where to serve and specific pace on the ball.”

Kentucky entered the match as the No. 1 seed and ranked No. 2 nationally, and has been one of the sport’s most consistent postseason teams over the past decade.

Emma Fredrick led Cal Poly with 11 kills, and Kendall Beshear added eight with two service aces. Emme Bullis finished with 23 assists and posted a perfect 1.000 hitting percentage, while Elif Hurriyet anchored the back row with nine digs.

As Cal Poly looks back on its season, there is plenty to be proud of. The Mustangs were one of only two mid-major programs to reach the Sweet 16, and their 27 wins mark the program’s highest total since 2017.

After falling to Hawai’i in last season’s Big West Championship final, the Mustangs found themselves among the final 16 teams this year after knocking off BYU and USC. It was an improbable rise for a group that came into the NCAA bracket unranked and near the bottom of the rankings entering the Sweet 16.

For an unranked team that entered the tournament unnoticed, this run didn’t just exceed expectations; it reshaped them.

“A lot of gratitude for my team’s ability to be really good role models in the way that they play the sport, and hopefully influencing young kids to want to be a part of volleyball moving forward,” Walters said.

The Mustangs graduate four seniors, with much of their core returning next fall.

This story was originally published December 11, 2025 at 4:22 PM.