High-flying No. 13 Arkansas, fueled by “small, mighty people,” has won 12 in a row

“I may be the tallest, but the people around me make me feel small because they’re mighty. I have some small, mighty people around me.”
— Arkansas middle Zoi Evans

This story actually has a back story, but ultimately it’s about Arkansas, a simply scrappy, undersized, fun team to watch that happens to be really good — No. 13 in the VolleyballMag.com Super 16 Media Poll — and one that is riding a 12-match winning streak and just one of two SEC teams still unbeaten in league play.

Before getting to the 2023 Razorbacks, however, here’s the back story.

One year and a few weeks ago, Arkansas visited Baton Rouge to play open SEC play at LSU. The Razorbacks were 9-1 at the time, off to the program’s best start since 2012. It was a team with two undersized outsides, 5-foot-10 Taylor Head and 5-7 (really) Jill Gillen who were crushing it, along with a 5-8 setter in Hannah Hogue and a 5-8 libero in Courtney Jackson.

We visited the night before the LSU match, Head, Gillen and me, and had a wonderful interview. Then I took this picture:

I wasn’t sure when I would get around to writing the story, but … 

Arkansas lost in five the next night at LSU. That meant the story had to hold. 

Four days later, the Razorbacks won at Ole Miss, but there was no time on my schedule to write. The story could wait. 

But then they got swept at Mississippi State before winning in five the next day. More self-induced non-writing excuses followed before Arkansas lost back-to-back matches to Kentucky. OK, Arkansas had Tennesse at home and if it could pull off a couple of victories, it was time to write.

Arkansas swept Tennessee two days in a row. But Gillen got hurt. The story was haunted and, well, it simply never saw the light of day.

Which brings us to a 2023 season in which Arkansas is 14-2 — the only losses were on back-to-back nights in late August to top-ranked Wisconsin — and 4-0 in the SEC. Only Tennessee (14-1, 5-0) has a better record in a league that got seven teams into last year’s NCAA Tournament.

Arkansas is in the midst of playing just one match in nine days. The Razorbacks go to Missouri on Sunday before playing host to Ole Miss on Friday.

“We’ve gotten better and better each year and this year has been a dream,” Gillen said after Arkansas swept at LSU this past Wednesday night….