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Volleyball Heads to Ole Miss

by LSUsports.net (@LSUsports)
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Volleyball Heads to Ole Miss

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BATON ROUGE — The LSU volleyball team will travel to Oxford, Miss., to face Ole Miss in the first of a two-match Mississippi road trip on Friday at 7 p.m. in the Gillom Sports Center.

The Tigers (7-10, 2-3 SEC) are coming off five consecutive home conference matches. Following the match with Ole Miss, LSU will take on Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss., on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. The Rebels (2-15, 1-3 SEC) have lost three straight conference matches, all on the road, and eight of their last nine.

“While it is important to win games at home, the real important matches are the ones on the road,” said LSU head coach Fran Flory. “Wins on the road are the ones that will decide the outcome of the conference standings. We have a good chance to go in and help ourselves this weekend and we need to take advantage of that. These are two key divisional matches on the road and we need to come away with a pair of wins.”

Last season, the Tigers took a pair of matches from Ole Miss, winning 3-0 in Baton Rouge and 3-2 in Oxford. In that last meeting, Regan Hood led the Tigers with nine blocks in the five-game match, tying her career high. In the decisive fifth game, she recorded six kills and a block and was responsible for six of LSU’s final nine points.

The Tigers are 36-9 all-time against Ole Miss, including a 15-3 record in Oxford. LSU has now won four straight and eight of its last nine against the Rebels.

This year, the Tigers are led by Hood, who leads the SEC in kills per game at 4.62. The junior also leads the team in block solos and ranks seventh in the league in blocks in conference matches. With 205 career blocks and a 1.04 blocks per game average, she is currently on pace to rank seventh all-time in school history in career blocks per game.

In LSU’s last match, Markeisha Constant recorded 11 kills and two blocks for the Tigers, her fifth double-figure kill match of the season. Freshman Kassi Mikulik led the team with a career-high 14 digs, while recording five kills. Rachel Pittman added nine digs for LSU.

For Ole Miss, Elena Garcia leads the Rebels with 3.80 kills per game and 3.78 digs per game, second in the SEC. Rachel Refenes leads Ole Miss with 1.26 blocks per game and a .263 attacking percentage.

The Tigers then travel to Mississippi State to take on the 1-13 Bulldogs. Mississippi State is winless in conference play, now standing at 0-4 in the league.