BATON ROUGE — After two competitive sets to open the match, the LSU volleyball team dominated the third to beat Mississippi State and record the weekend sweep, 25-18, 25-23, 25-4, on Sunday afternoon in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
LSU (14-9, 9-7 SEC) increased its SEC West lead to a one-and-a-half games over Ole Miss, which lost to Tennessee on Sunday. For Mississippi State, the loss marked its 12th straight of the season.
“We challenged the team between the second and third sets to raise our level of play,” LSU head coach Fran Flory said. “We really wanted to control outcome, control touches, play fast and enjoy the moment. It looked like we enjoyed playing rather than looking like it was a job like we did in the first two sets.”
As a team the Tigers recorded 10 service aces, and LSU used five in the first set to pull away from the Bulldogs. The second set was tight throughout as Mississippi State outhit LSU with a .375 clip to the Tigers’ .350. In the third set the Bulldogs held two leads, first at 2-0 and then at 3-2. After Brittnee Cooper recorded a kill to knot the score at three apiece, senior Elena Martinez served LSU to 16 straight points before the Bulldogs scored again on an attack error by senior Kyna Washington to make it 19-4. The Tigers scored six straight after that to close out the match.
LSU led in almost every statistical category as the Tigers recorded more kills (44-24), assists (41-24), aces (10-3) and team blocks (9.0-4.0). LSU also outhit the Bulldogs .396 to .100. Both squads finished with 35 digs.
Mississippi State (6-20, 1-14) was led by junior Ioana Demian who recorded a match-high 13 kills, but no other Bulldog had more than three. Defensively, sophomore Ashley Newsome finished with three assisted blocks and freshman Leanna King tallied eight digs to lead Mississippi State.
Freshman Michele Williams was phenomenal as she led the Tigers with 12 kills on a career-high .550 hitting percentage. She also led the defense with six blocks, including two solo rejections. Washington was superb as well as she pounded out 11 kills and finished with four blocks. Martinez recorded double-digit digs as she tallied a match-high 14. Junior Sam Dabbs led everybody with 26 assists.
For the weekend, LSU finished with 22 service aces and the Tigers spread the wealth on Sunday as five players finished with two. Martinez, Washington, Dabbs, Brittney Johnson and Lauren Waclawczyk all recorded a pair of aces.
LSU will be back in the PMAC on Friday at 7 p.m. when the Tigers play host to Auburn, which lost 3-1 to Florida on Sunday.