BATON ROUGE ? LSU volleyball coach Fran Flory was joined by Dr. KC White, Dean of Students and Interim Vice Chancellor of Student Life, and met with the media Tuesday to preview the week ahead for the Tigers.
LSU’s match Friday against Arkansas serves as the Tigers ?Dig Pink’ event. Prior to the match, LSU Athletics is teaming with LSU University Recreation [UREC] with an initiative for the LSU community to create awareness, impart knowledge and raise money as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Dr. White will lead a 1-mile ?Victory Walk’ that begins at 5:30 p.m. starting at the UREC, moves down ?Victory Hill’ and ends at the Maravich Center.
Fans unable to attend the match can still donate online to LSU’s team page to benefit the Side-Out Foundation at https://www.side-out.org/application/teams/team_page/1586
LSU (13-4, 7-1 SEC) has notched six consecutive victories highlighted by a 3-0 sweep over then-No. 6 Florida that lifted the Tigers into the AVCA Top 25 earlier this week. The Tigers conclude the weekend by taking on Ole Miss Sunday at 1:30 p.m. inside the Maravich Center.
LSU DEAN OF STUDENTS DR. K.C. WHITE
Opening statement…
“LSU, as a university community, has done a great job in terms of their support and compassion with one their own as I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. As Coach Flory mentioned, it’s probably very difficult to think about someone that you may know peripherally, but when you know someone personally who has been diagnosed with breast cancer you try to think about what you can do. The LSU community has really truly stepped up as it relates to what’s going on in university recreation currently; we have a pink treadmill there. The Side Tracks Company has challenged people to ?Think Pink’. For every mile that is run on that treadmill, ten cents is donated to breast cancer research funds. One of the things we’re going to be doing this Friday is having a victory walk. It’s going to start over at University Recreation, and we will work our way down going down Victory Hill just as the football team gets to do and bring it on into the PMAC to support the volleyball team as they take on Arkansas. That pink treadmill from Side Tracks also is going to be at that volleyball game, so people have the opportunity to step on the treadmill, get a couple miles in and cheer on the Tigers as we play the Razorbacks. All those funds are being raised for breast cancer research and awareness, as well as the Side-Out Foundation. I think this is an opportunity to raise awareness, to generate support and rally behind a lot of great things to find not only a victory as it relates to volleyball, but also a cure for breast cancer. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation has a lot of survivors within this Baton Rouge community. It is my honor and privilege to be able to be another survivor to help tell the story as well as support university athletics while we’re at it. I thank you for the opportunity, and please come out at 5:30 p.m. at University Recreation, go down the hill and cheer on the Tigers as we take on Arkansas.”
HEAD COACH FRAN FLORY
Opening statement…
“The most important thing for us this week is the Arkansas match. I wanted to start off today talking about our ?Dig Pink’ event. Cancer has affected all of us in some capacity or another, and Dr. White has graciously accepted the position of being our spokesperson for this event with UREC and coupling with our promotions and marketing staff. This is something that’s very important to us, and we’re working really hard to raise some funds for the prevention and cure of breast cancer. Side-Out Foundation is who we’re going through this year, along with Komen and Baton Rouge. Side-Out Foundation was started by a bunch of volleyball coaches who are retired, who are affected one way or another [by breast cancer] as we all have been. Their goal is to raise funds and awareness. They’ve done a great job; their goal is to have 3,000 teams to join in this venture with them. I haven’t looked at the website, but all funds we raise through that will be generated through websites. You can directly contribute online, which is a great thing and certainly at our match this weekend.
“We will wear pink uniforms. We will show our colors in that capacity. Mizuno has helped us with that the last couple of years. Secondary to working on that cure is our volleyball team. We had a great victories last weekend and a great weekend overall. We played South Carolina Friday night and were able to win a 3-0 match against a very tough team, a very competitive team. They’re a team that keeps the ball in play and challenges you to play at a higher level of consistency. Fortunately for us we played them first, which allowed us to understand what we needed to do for Sunday against the Florida Gators. For the first time since 1991, we were able to knock those guys off. We beat them, 3-0. A lot of people have made a big deal about us beating them, 3-0. The bottom-line for us is that we won the match. What that does really and truly is keeps us in contention for the overall championship, and that’s the bottom-line. It’s one match of 20. We are two matches short of being halfway through the SEC season. There’s a ton of matches left. I’m sure they will be ready for us in Gainesville, and we’ll certainly try to be ready for them again. The best thing that came out of the weekend in terms of our individual players and team was that Sam Dabbs was named the SEC Offensive Player of the Week, and she was just named the AVCA National Player of the Week [that will be released later this afternoon]. It’s been a long time that an LSU volleyball player has been given that honor. Other people that played great on the weekend was Marina Skinder. She’s our heart and soul. She did a tremendous job of managing our team, keeping us in rallies and having them [her teammates] not allowed the prospective to get too big or too small. If you were able to watch the match, Brittnee Cooper put on a show the entire weekend and played like the true All-American that she is. Hopefully, our working into the rankings for the first time this year will help our individual honors and certainly our postseason honors and opportunities.”
On how focused and ready the team was to play Florida…
“I have to say I wasn’t sure on Saturday at practice. On Sunday, we had a very busy day as everybody did this past weekend. Through the day, this calm came over me. As I was around the team in pregame practice, you could feel a different air about them. You could feel they weren’t uptight but excited for the opportunity. There’s intensity and tensity. In the big matches that we’ve played against Stanford, Nebraska and Kentucky, we played tense. We played afraid to win. For the first time, this team really gave me the feeling that they were intense. They believed and proved that.”
On preventing momentum loss…
“The bottom line is Florida doesn’t mean anything if we don’t take care of the next match. Our team will be prepared; we have a bunch of seniors?Marina Skinder, Lauren DiGirolamo, Sam Dabbs and Brittnee Cooper?and they understand. They know that this is a really long season. So many things happen in the second half of the season. Frankly, we have some really tough road trips. We go to Kentucky and Tennessee; that’s a tough road trip traditionally. We go to South Carolina and Florida. That’s another tough road trip. We have to take care of the ones that are right ahead of us. Arkansas is playing great right now. They just beat Alabama 24-22 in the fifth set on their home court; that’s a marathon match. That makes a team believe. They’re a young team, and when a young team starts believing, they become really dangerous, especially in the second half of the season. We’re going to have to be ready for every match.”
On Sam Dabbs‘s career at LSU…
“We were very fortunate to get Sam. We recruited her out of a high school and [she] decided to go to the University of Louisville. Through connections, she wasn’t really happy there and didn’t have great connections there in terms of the coach and all of that. When she started looking around for another school, she contacted us and said ?I may want to come. I remember from the first part what your program is about and I think that’s really important to me now.’ When she came in, we knew we had a special player. We also knew we had to manage her. She came in with a great deal of confidence and great level. She’s played in USA Youth Teams; she’s truly one of the premier setters of her class. The great thing for me is watching her continue to grow and when you get these awards. It really lends a lot of credibility and certainly she’s very deserving of these awards. I can’t be happier for a kid; in fact, I’ve never been more excited for a kid to get that award this week after the work put in and dedication she’s shown here.”
On strengths of team…
“I think we’re very good offensively. In the past, we’ve been kind of inconsistent offensively. We haven’t hit at a high percentage. This team is working on all cylinders. We have people who can put the ball away in every rotation; from every position of every rotation. That’s something different. We’ve been very one-dimensional in the past, and now we’re five or six-dimensional. Sam Dabbs was second on the team in kills Friday night against South Carolina. For a setter to do that, she was on kill short of having a triple-double, and triple-doubles are rare in volleyball unless you’re 6’2 [offense]. We don’t do that. For her, that’s another reason she was able to have that award.”