BATON ROUGE — An eruption of excitement pierced the room as the LSU volleyball team learned Sunday night it had received an at large bid to face 14th-seeded UCLA in Los Angeles in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
The SEC West champion Tigers (18-9, 13-7 SEC) will take on the Bruins (20-10, 9-9 Pac-10) Friday at 10 p.m. CST and the winner will face either Duke or San Francisco in the second round.
Duke (24-8, 15-5 ACC) will face San Francisco (22-7, 11-3 WCC) at 7:30 p.m. CST on Friday. All matches will be played at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.
“We are really excited to be in the tournament,” LSU head coach Fran Flory said. “We knew that we were a bubble team, so we are thankful for the opportunity to compete. We are excited to go to California, and it seems like a trend to be sent out west. The first step was a chance to play, and now we will start preparing to play Friday night against a very talented UCLA team. We feel worthy to play and hopefully we will represent the conference well.”
The first round match will mark the 10th appearance in the NCAA Tournament for the Tigers and the fourth-straight under Flory.