BATON ROUGE — The LSU volleyball team will face Arkansas for the second time in three days on Senior Day at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Sunday at 2 p.m.
The Tigers are fresh off their first win, a 3-0 decision on Friday, over the LadyBacks in school history. The win improved LSU to .500 on the year at 13-13, including a 6-8 Southeastern Conference mark.
With the win, the Tigers also clinched a spot in the eight-team SEC Tournament which takes place in Gainesville, Fla., from Nov. 17-19. The Tigers are guaranteed no less than a No. 7 seed in the draw, but could be seeded sixth with a win.
“The most important thing for us this weekend was to clinch a spot in the tournament,” said LSU coach Fran Flory. “We’ve done that, now we need to take advantage of the possibility to move up one spot in the seedings.”
LSU will look to become the first SEC Western Division team to ever sweep the LadyBacks in a season on Sunday. The Tigers became just the fourth West team to ever defeat Arkansas in conference play in seven years.
“It would be a huge step for our program to come away with a season sweep against Arkansas,” Flory said. “They have set the bar in the West since joining the conference, so this would be another step for us in getting to where we want to go.”
The LadyBacks will be hard pressed to stop the LSU middle blockers, Lauren Cuyler and Meagan Davis, who combined for 24 kills and 14 blocks against them on Friday. Cuyler and Davis were also very efficient with attack percentages of .407 and .556, respectively.
Current SEC Player of the Week Libby Windell will lead Arkansas. The Tigers were able to shut down Windell, the 1999 SEC Freshman of the Year, who managed 11 kills but hit only .261 and had just one block.