BATON ROUGE — In front of a raucous home crowd, Tiger junior Brittnee Cooper had a career match as the LSU volleyball team pushed eighth-ranked Florida to five sets but came up short in the deciding set, 19-25, 26-24, 30-32, 25-23, 15-9, on Friday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU’s record fell to 11-7 overall and 6-5 in the Southeastern Conference, but maintained their lead in the SEC West, while the league-leading Gators moved to 17-1 with a perfect 11-0 conference mark. The Tigers return to action on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. against the Gamecocks of South Carolina.
“The fans were awesome tonight,” LSU head coach Fran Flory said. “Our team coming out in the first set and feeling the electricity in the building allowed us to feed off that, and that really carried us through. We had a tremendous home-court advantage all night, but we didn’t make enough plays throughout the match to come out on top.”
LSU came out and jumped on Florida in the first set, posting a decisive 25-19 win. The Gators edged out the Tigers in the second set, 26-24, to even the match. After fighting off two set points and failing to convert on four, LSU took advantage of its fifth set point to take game three, 32-30.
Falling behind early in the fourth game, the Tigers fought back to push Florida to the limit before the Gators sent the match to five with a 25-23 set four win. LSU never had momentum in the fifth frame as Florida took the early lead, 8-3, as the Tigers could not get over a few bad breaks. The Gators remained undefeated in league play with the 15-9 win in set five, just the second time they have been pushed to five sets in conference action this season.
Cooper led the match with a career-high 24 kills, while also posting a match and season-high 12 blocks. The junior middle blocker also recorded a .326 hitting percentage while controlling the match from the inside.
Freshman Michele Williams also had an outstanding match with 14 kills and a career-best four blocks on a .333 hitting mark. Sam Dabbs was one kill and one dig shy of the double-double with nine kills, nine digs and 43 assists. She also ranked second on the team with six blocks and led the match with a .438 hitting percentage.
With eight kills in the match, senior Kyna Washington moved past Kelly Thompson into eighth place in career kills in LSU history with 1,362. She needs only eight more kills to surpass Jennifer Hampton and move into seventh place all-time. In addition, senior Elena Martinez moved past Detra Brown into sixth place in career digs with 1,197 with a match-best 23 digs against the Gators. She needs 65 more digs to surpass Wendy Stammer and move into fifth place.
Kelly Murphy led Florida with 19 kills and a.395 hitting percentage. She posted a double-double by adding 20 assists, and also recorded eight digs and two blocks. Kristina Johnson led the Gators with six blocks and Elyse Cusack led Florida with 17 digs.
The dominant team in the SEC for the last 18 seasons, the Gators have lost only six conference matches since 1990. The last time LSU pushed Florida to five games came during the 1994 season, when the Tigers ultimately fell in the fifth game by the identical 15-9 score.
LSU returns to action at home on Sunday afternoon as the Tigers take on South Carolina at 1:30 p.m. in the Maravich Center. The Gamecocks were also five-game losers on Friday, falling to Georgia in the fifth game, 15-8, in Athens.