BATON ROUGE — LSU head coach Fran Flory goes after career win No. 150 this weekend when her Tiger volleyball team takes on Mississippi State on Friday at 7 p.m. at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Flory, who owns a 149-153 (.493) career record, has earned 39 of her wins in the past three-and-a-half seasons at the helm of LSU.
“It is a nice accomplishment, but reaching 150 wins is not my focus right now,” said Flory. “I am more concerned about what we have to do this weekend and for the rest of the year if we want to reach our goal of winning the SEC West.”
LSU will be looking to sweep a two-game weekend set for the first time this year as it has gone 1-1 in each of the past three weekends. Facing Mississippi State and Ole Miss, which the Tigers were a combined 4-0 against last season, the prospect looks good for LSU.
“We have two teams this weekend that we have the ability to beat,” said Flory. “We need to come out and take care of business.”
The Bulldogs started the year 11-0 before slumping recently to their current 13-6 record, which includes a 1-5 conference mark. They split this past weekend with a win over Auburn and loss to division-leader Alabama.
Brianne Smedley leads the State attack with a .389 attack percentage and a 0.98 blocks per game average. Christine Owen is the Bulldogs most versatile player, averaging 3.62 kills per game and 2.56 digs per game, both team highs.
The Tigers will counter with Meagan Davis and Meghan Bedford. Davis has a team-high .345 attack percentage and 0.96 blocks per game.
Bedford has been on fire recently, recording three double-doubles in her last four matches after notching only one in her first two seasons as a Tiger. She has also broken career-highs for kills (twice) and digs in that four match span.