BATON ROUGE — After a four-match road swing, the LSU volleyball team returns home for four straight Southeastern Conference matches beginning with a match on Sunday against Kentucky at 1:30 p.m. in the Maravich Center.
The Tigers currently stand at 10-8 and 2-6 in SEC play, while the Wildcats are 11-9 overall and also 2-7 in league play. Kentucky was a five-game loser to Arkansas on the road on Friday.
“We took a different approach this week,” said LSU head coach Fran Flory. “We wiped the slate clean and started over. We told the players that we were going to act like this was the beginning of the season. We need to go back to the basics and have fun playing volleyball again.”
Junior Jelena Mijatovic leads the Tigers with 2.95 kills per game and ranks 22nd in the NCAA in service aces per game at 0.61. Junior Ivana Kuzmic leads the SEC and ranks 11th in the nation with a 1.63 blocks per game average. Senior Rachel Pittman boasts a team-best 2.92 digs per game average.
Danielle Wallace leads Kentucky with 4.01 kills per game, while Amy Kaplan, Sarah Spinner and Alex Montefalco each average over three kills per game. Kaplan and Kristen Cunningham lead the Wildcats with 0.92 and 0.94 blocks per game respectively. The 2003 SEC Defensive Player of the Year, Jenni Casper, posts a team-best 4.52 digs per game for Kentucky.
The Tigers are 15-22 all-time against Kentucky, including a 6-8 record in Baton Rouge. The pair has split the last six meetings, with each posting a 2-1 record at home. Last year, each team won its home meeting in five games. This is the only meeting between the pair this season.
Next week, LSU will play three home matches as the Tigers host Arkansas on Tuesday, Auburn on Friday and Alabama on Sunday in a crucial week in SEC action.