BATON ROUGE — LSU volleyball coach Fran Flory met with the media Tuesday to preview the week ahead for Tiger volleyball. LSU (11-4, 5-1 SEC) leads the SEC Western Division after stringing together four consecutive road victories highlighted by a trio of sweeps over Auburn, Georgia and Mississippi State.
The Tigers face off with South Carolina Friday at 7 p.m. before taking on No. 6 Florida Sunday inside the Maravich Center. Sunday’s match against the Gators is set for 6 p.m. on ESPNU.
LSU Volleyball Quotes
October 6, 2009
LSU VOLLEYBALL HEAD COACH FRAN FLORY
Opening Statement …
“We feel very good about where we are and we’re awfully thankful to be back home after two long, tough road trips. We’re fortunate enough to come back with four wins from places that we haven’t traditionally been successful. We were successful at Auburn and Georgia. Alabama is a place that we struggle all the time and we were able to knock them off last Friday night in a four set match with excellent execution from our team. We probably hit the highest level of execution that we have had all year Sunday at Mississippi State. If you equate turnovers in basketball to hitting errors in volleyball, we had six hitting errors in an entire match. That’s taking care of the ball and that’s one of the highest efficiency level that I’ve ever had at any level with any team. I’m very happy with where we are at. Defense needs to get a little bit better, but the most important thing is we have a huge weekend ahead. Florida [football] weekend is here and we’re playing Florida as well. We also have an important match on Friday night. South Carolina has struggled and they’re going to come in with a great record, but their star player [Ivana Kujundzic] has been out with an ankle injury and of course she’s back. We’re going to face a much better team Friday night than their record would indicate. They’re a very physical team and a great defensive team. They’re a team that keeps the ball off of the floor. They make you stay the course, push you to be impatient, make hitting errors and allows you to error yourself out. The fact that we’re coming off a weekend where we did a very good job of managing that side of our offense this would equate to a very interesting and tight match. The Florida match-up on Sunday is something that everyone points to every year. They’re the team that we all are continuing to chase. Kentucky beat them last weekend on their own home court in a great match. It’s too bad that match wasn’t on ESPNU because that would’ve been a great match to have. We’re fortunate enough to have an ESPNU match. Start time for Sunday is 6 p.m. which is very unusual and an odd time for a Sunday. When you get the opportunity to be on TV with a national audience, we’ll do whatever we need to do. The kids are playing well. Marina Skender is doing a tremendous job playing six rotations. She was the best server in league for two years before her knee injury and really hasn’t come back with that part of her game, but last weekend really showed signs of that returning. Brittnee Cooper, I think everyone is keying on her because she was the woman in the beginning of the season. Our outside [hitters] have done a great job of balancing that out. Our setters Sam Dabbs and Brittney Johnson continue to run a great offense so it will be an interesting weekend. It will be a very tough and very vital weekend as home matches in the SEC are the key to any championship so we have to take care of our own.”
On what question mark at the beginning of the season has been answered …
“I think the biggest question mark was who was going to be our other outside hitter besides Marina Skender. I thought Madie Jones came in as a freshman and did a tremendous job in the beginning of the season. She is doing what most freshman do in October when the pressure is on academically and the volleyball pressure [on the court] increases. She has had a little lull and isn’t executing at the same level. The great thing for us is Angela Bensend, who is coming off shoulder surgery and who has started for the last two years for us, fit perfectly together. As Madie kind of faded a little bit, Angela has stepped up. Her confidence level came around and she has been our most efficient outside hitter for the last four matches. She is ready and I think that was the biggest question mark that has been answered. “
On if they are where she wanted to be at this point in the season …
“I think we’re awfully close. We lost two five-set matches to [Top 10 teams] Stanford and Nebraska. I thought we would get one of those. I didn’t dream that we would get both, but I really believed that we would get one of those. I knew Kentucky here was going to be a touch match just by the combination of Tennessee and Kentucky because of the two different style of play. You only have one day to adapt so it’s awfully hard for teams to do that. I think that’s the toughest combination of two teams with two different styles that you play against in the SEC. I knew that would be tough, and having Kentucky second was even more difficult so that wasn’t surprising. We’re very fortunate that we have another shot at everybody. We play twenty [SEC] matches, we play home and away against everybody so we’ll get another shot so we’ll see what we can do. We get Kentucky on the front end of that one so hopefully that will be a better situation for us.”
On how much the team can feed off of the energy of the Florida game …
“Well, it’s very interesting to watch because as soccer goes and as volleyball goes, football goes as well. You know we set it off Friday night. I have been in athletics a long time, you watch what happens on campus. As teams begin to win through the middle part and end of the week, every team feeds off of that. Certainly, I don’t proclaim that football feeds off of us, but we certainly feed off them. When they overcome great deficits, and what a great game that was to watch at Georgia, they show that type of resiliency. We were celebrating and screaming in the hotel. They were telling us we needed to calm down a little bit. Attitude is [the] key in athletics. We all have great athletes but the team that truly believes and knows they can [win] is the team that is going to get it done. Certainly, the football team has shown great resiliency and hopefully we can mimic that as well.”
On if a win over Florida would be a signature win for the program …
“It would be a signature win on the season. We’ve waited a really long time to try and get that. I think this team physically matches up. The question is do we have the right attitude and do we have the right approach. Do we really believe that we can? I can’t answer that for you. The players have to answer that when the chips are down. We had them with their backs against the wall last year [at home], lost in five sets on two aces. One that hit the net and trickled over, just an unlucky play, and then the next ball our senior [Elena Martinez] gets aced on match point. That’s probably the closest and the best opportunity that we had. I don’t truly believe that we’re going to win that match. It’s going to depend on how our kids will respond to that. Much of that will depend on how we respond Friday night.”