BATON ROUGE ? After tough back-to-back five-game losses last weekend on the road, the 25th-ranked LSU volleyball team returns home for a mid-week Southeastern Conference match with Ole Miss at 7 p.m. on “Wishing Well Wednesday.”
As part of the “Dig for the Cure” fundraiser, the Tigers will have a special wishing well set up on the Maravich Center concourse where fans can donate a quarter for the chance to win great prizes. All of the proceeds of the wishing well will be donated to the Baton Rouge Komen for the Cure foundation in support of breast cancer research. In addition, the first 100 fans will receive FREE care magnets.
Prizes for the wishing well promotion include an autographed LSU team volleyball, two autographed “Dig for the Cure” t-shirts, a golf prize pack, a cheer prize pack and a women’s basketball prize pack. In addition, all fans who donate a dollar or more will be entered to win a digital camera, which will be announced next Tuesday prior to the Notre Dame match.
The Tigers (15-4, 7-3 SEC) are currently tied with the Rebels (17-4, 7-3 SEC) atop the SEC Western Division standings. In their first meeting this season, LSU swept Ole Miss, 30-24, 30-22, 30-21, in Oxford in one of the Tigers’ most dominating matches of the season.
“We have got to get better,” said LSU head coach Fran Flory. “We play Ole Miss, a team that beat Kentucky at Tennessee last weekend in two very long matches very similar to ours. The key for us is that we need our key players to come up with big kills at key times. We have not been able to come up with that timely play when the opportunity presented itself.”
While the Tigers dropped back-to-back five-game matches last weekend at Tennessee and Kentucky, the Rebels came out on top in five games at both Kentucky at Tennessee and have now won five straight since a five-game loss to Georgia in late September.
“Certainly a rough weekend for us as it was across the board for the Tigers,” said Flory. “It was a hard fought match on Friday night against Tennessee where we had every opportunity to win but we made a couple of critical errors late in the match. We followed the football team to Kentucky for Sunday’s match and played in front of a pretty hostile crowd that got after us pretty hard. We played really well for two games then allowed Kentucky to get into a groove.”
In their first meeting this season, it was a dominating team effort for the Tigers as LSU recorded 62 kills to only 34 for Ole Miss. In addition, LSU posted its highest hitting percentage of the year, hitting at a .346 clip as a team. The Tigers also dominated with 61 digs, compared to 42 for the Rebels. The closest statistic was in blocks with LSU leading 9.0 to 7.0.
“We know that these matches coming up are crucial,” said Flory. “We went to Ole Miss and Arkansas and won at their place, so they are going to come after us hard. They will be looking to get those matches back. Certainly, we have got to be ready for these matches. Up to this point in the season, this week matches are the key matches for us.”
Junior Kyna Washington dominated the match for the Tigers. With 24 kills, it marked the second most in a three-game match in school history. Going into the third game, she had already posted 22 kills before closing out with 24, two shy of Monique Adams’ record of 26 against Oklahoma in 1991. In addition, Washington posted eight digs, three blocks, while hitting an amazing .378.
Joining Washington with double-figure kills was Marina Skender with 16, eight of which were recorded in the final frame, while hitting .452; and Lauren DeGirolamo with 10 while hitting at a .421 clip.
Elena Martinez recorded 20 against the Rebels, one of her 13 20-dig matches this season. Skender recorded a double-double 15 digs to go with her 16 kills. DeGirolamo also led LSU with five blocks, while Washington, Angela Bensend and Brittnee Cooper added three each.
For the season, LSU and Ole Miss are evenly matched. The Tigers lead the Rebels with 15.6 kills per game, compared to 15.2 for Ole Miss, and LSU holds a slight advantage in hitting efficiency with a .219 clip for the year, while the Rebels are hitting .213. Defensively, the Tigers lead Ole Miss in blocking with 2.9 blocks per game, compared to 2.2 for the Rebels, but Ole Miss leads LSU in digs per game with 17.8 compared to 16.4 for the Tigers.
DeGirolamo recorded a career-high 21 kills to go along with four blocks last Friday against Tennessee. For the season, she and Cooper are both ranked in the top five in the SEC in blocks per game, with DeGirolamo posting 1.40 while Cooper is averaging 1.39. DeGirolamo is also sixth in the league with a .353 hitting percentage and ranks second on the team with 3.441 kills per game.
Last Friday against Tennessee, Cooper posted a career-high 10 blocks, the second double-figure blocking match of her career. The match also marked her second career double-double with 13 kills to go along with her 10 blocks. The sophomore followed that up with a career high 18 kills against Kentucky on Sunday.
Washington continues to lead the Tigers offensively with 4.23 kills per game, third most in the conference. A two-time SEC Player of the Week in 2007, Washington has recorded double-figure kills in 16 of LSU’s 19 matches this season. In addition, Washington leads the team and ranks second in the league with 0.57 aces per game. For her career, she needs only 34 kills to become just the 14th player in LSU history to record 1,000 career kills and only the fifth to accomplish the feat as a junior.
Martinez leads the SEC with an amazing 5.57 digs per game. In her first season as the starting libero, Martinez broke the school records with 34 digs in a five-game win Iowa and 33 digs in a four-game win over Arkansas. She currently ranks ninth in single season digs in LSU history with 418, but is only seven digs away from moving into fifth place and just 117 digs away from breaking the school single-season record.
Katie Kramer and Caitlin Weiss lead Ole Miss with 3.53 and 3.46 kills per game respectively. Emily Jones leads the Rebels with 1.06 blocks per game, the only Ole Miss player averaging over a block a game, and Tara Langley leads the Rebels with 5.01 digs per game. With a setter who takes advantage of the dump, Rachel Kieckhaefer is recording almost a kill and a half per game with a team-best .304 hitting percentage.
“Ole Miss is a very balanced team,” said Flory. “They play very steady. What they are is what they are and they are going to keep doing it until either you break or they lose.”
LSU leads the all-time series with Ole Miss, 42-12, after knocking off the Rebels in Oxford on Sept. 12 to open SEC play. The Tigers have also won two-straight at home against Ole Miss, with the last LSU loss to the Rebels in Baton Rouge coming in 2004.
The Tigers remain at home to face Arkansas on Friday at 7 p.m. The Lady’Backs are coming off their best weekend of the year, which saw Arkansas defeat then-No. 5 and undefeated Florida at home before sweeping South Carolina. As part of the LSU “Dig for the Cure” campaign, all fans wearing pink will get into the match for FREE and both teams will wear special pink shirts for warm-ups prior to the contest.
Fans are then asked to bring their filled piggy banks from the Alabama match and donate the spare change to breast cancer research. Fans returning their piggy banks will receive free admission and, after making their donation, will get to keep their piggy banks. Those returning the change from their piggy banks will also have a chance to win great prizes throughout the Arkansas match.
The “Dig for the Cure” campaign was originally started in 2003 by Charlotte head coach Lisa Marston, whose mother was a breast cancer survivor, and has spread to volleyball programs across the country in recent years. Last year, the campaign raised over $72,000 nationally.