BATON ROUGE — The LSU volleyball team closed out the regular season with a 30-26, 30-23, 21-30, 28-30, 19-17, win over Kentucky on Senior Night on Friday in the Maravich Center.
With the win, which avenged an earlier loss to the Wildcats by the Tigers, LSU (21-6, 11-5 Southeastern Conference) moved to within a half game of Arkansas in the SEC Western Division. The loss dropped Kentucky to 16-9 on the season and 9-6 in league play as the Wildcats close out the season with a match against the Lady Razorbacks on Sunday that will decide the Western Division championship.
Following the match, the Tigers honored their two seniors, Jelena Mijatovic and Ivana Kuzmic. The pair were presented with gifts and were played touching videos from their parents in Serbia and Croatia, respectively.
After taking the 2-0 lead after two games, Kentucky game out of the break and stepped up its level of play. The Tigers fell behind in the third game and could never quite recover. In the fourth game, the duo traded leads until the Wildcats put up the final two points to send the match to a fifth game. LSU held four matches points, to only one for Kentucky, before the Tigers finally took the match on a Wildcat attacking error, 19-17.
“We came out tentative and we came out like we had the pressure,” head coach Fran Flory said of her team after the second game. “Give credit to Kentucky because they changed what they were doing. They took it to us rather than us attacking them. We sat back and once you open the door like that for a team it is awfully hard to get that door closed again.
“We had to go tit for tat for them, point for point,” Flory said of game five. “They did a great job of coming through in key times. Mel (Clark) after 10 in game five was the difference in game five.”
For the match, LSU out killed Kentucky, 81-73, while the Wildcats held a slight advantage with a .206 hitting percentage to a .205 mark for the Tigers. Defensively, LSU posted 14 blocks to 11.5 for Kentucky. In a rather telling statistic, the Tigers out dug Kentucky, which ranks second in the SEC in digs per game, 105 to 102. It marked the first time LSU recorded 100 or more digs in a match since 2000.
“You have to fight through on defense,” said Flory. “Kentucky is one of the best digging teams in the league and for us to out dig them is an unbelievable feat for us because we don’t have the stats digging that other teams do. For us to out dig a Kentucky team that is among the top is a tremendous change in how we have been playing defense. Our kids just did a great job.”
Freshman Kyna Washington led the Tigers with 22 kills, while also recording 10 digs, five blocks and two service aces. Kuzmic posted 14 kills with 10 blocks, her fourth double-figure blocking match of the season. It gave her over 700 career blocks, making her the first Tiger to reach the 700 block mark in school history.
Clark and Mijatovic each recorded 13 kills, while Marina Skender posted 12. Mijatovic also recorded 11 digs, while Skender posted a career-best 21. Kassi Mikulik led the Tigers with a career-best 26 digs, while Daniela Romero recorded a career-best 23 digs with 60 assists.
“You have to have players make big plays and Kyna Washington made big plays at key times for us,” said Flory. “Kyna really took up the slack when Marina was not in the offense. I thought Dee did a really nice job in just maintaining her composure, making good choices at the right times.
Danielle Wallace led the match with 26 kills for Kentucky, while Amy Kaplan recorded 16 and Ashlee Fisher had 13. Jenni Casper posted a match-best 36 digs, followed by 16 from Julie Gagnon, 13 from Leigh Marcum and 11 by Alisa Pierce. Kaplan and Marcum led the Wildcats with six blocks each.
The Tigers will now await their seeding in the SEC Tournament, which begins next Thursday in Tuscaloosa, Ala. LSU will be either the third or fourth seed, depending on the outcome of the Arkansas-Kentucky match.