BATON ROUGE — The LSU volleyball team will take to the road for a crucial Southeastern Conference weekend for a Friday night match with Ole Miss and a Sunday afternoon match with Mississippi State.
The Tigers are 10-10 overall and 4-5 in conference play. They are currently tied with Arkansas for second place in the SEC Western Division. Along with Georgia, the three teams form a three-way tie for fifth-place in the league as the conference season winds down. Only the top eight teams in the league earn berths in the SEC Tournament.
“We have dug ourselves a hole in terms of our position in the SEC West,” said LSU coach Fran Flory. “Our goal was to win the West and now we will need help to do that. Beyond that, our focus needs to be on earning the highest seed possible for the SEC Tournament.”
LSU begins its battle for seeding on Friday night in Oxford, Miss., against an Ole Miss team that the Tigers had to rally to defeat, 3-1, just two weeks ago. The Rebels will be looking to vault head coach John Blair into the top spot in Ole Miss history for wins as he searches for the 201st in his stay with the Rebels.
Leading the way for LSU will be Meghan Bedford, who came off the bench while fighting the flu in the last meeting to light up Ole Miss for 13 kills and a .385 attack percentage en route to being named SEC Player of the Week.
“Bedford will need revert to how she played against (Ole Miss) last time,” Flory said of the outside hitter who was unable to notch double-digit kills in either match last weekend. “But everyone else will have to step up also. They will be looking to shut her down, so the rest of the team will need to make plays.”
The Tigers will be challenged to stop Jaime Burns and Kira Zschau, who each hit for over 20 kills in a losing effort for the Rebels in the earlier meeting.
“Ole Miss is a much improved team that has good players and good coaching,” said LSU coach Fran Flory. “If we don’t show up to play, they can beat us pretty quickly as they did last time when they won game one 15-4. Jaime Burns and Kira Zschau both had a good game against us last time, that is something we can’t let happen again.”