BATON ROUGE — LSU’s Ivana Kuzmic was named the Southeastern Conference Volleyball Defensive Player of the Week, it was announced on Monday afternoon.
Leading the team to a 2-1 mark at the UTSA Dome Rally in San Antonio last weekend, Kuzmic led all three Tiger matches in blocking. She also ranked third on the team in hitting percentage and fourth in kills for the weekend.
As LSU took No. 13 Texas A&M to five games, the senior from Split, Croatia posted 10 blocks, her first double-figure blocking match of the season and fifth in two years as a Tiger. In three-game sweeps of Texas-San Antonio and Rice, which is receiving votes in the national poll, Kuzmic recorded eight blocks in each match.
For the tournament, she averaged 2.36 blocks per game with 2.18 kills per game and a .391 hitting percentage. She now needs only 10 blocks to become the third player in LSU history to record 600 career blocks. In addition, she is just 24 kills shy of becoming the 14th player in LSU history to record 1,000 career kills.
This is the second SEC Defensive Player of the Week honor of her career, after earning the award on Sept. 20 of last season. In addition, she was named the SEC Player of the Week on Aug. 29 of this year.
The Tigers are still attempting to reschedule their matches for this weekend. The Sugar Bowl Classic in New Orleans, which LSU had been scheduled to participate in, was cancelled due to Hurricane Katrina. Information regarding the team’s plans for this week will be released as soon as they are available.