BATON ROUGE – The LSU volleyball team looks to complete a perfect four-match home swing Sunday against Ole Miss. First serve is on-tap for 1 p.m. and the match will be televised by CST with Lyn Rollins and Kent Lowe on the call.
LSU (14-6, 7-3 SEC), leaders of the SEC Western Division at the halfway point of the league schedule, has won three consecutive decisions. Last time out, the Tigers claimed their seventh sweep of the season over Alabama and powered home a .468 team hitting percentage.
Ole Miss (5-14, 1-10 SEC) has dropped nine consecutive decisions, but took SEC co-leader Tennessee to five sets two weeks ago in Knoxville.
Regina Thomas is one of three players to average over 2.00 kills per set. She headlines the SEC with a blistering .378 hitting clip and posted a SEC-leading 1.07 blocks per set. On the back row, Morgan Springer has garnered 4.08 digs per set, the fourth-highest average in the SEC.
LSU and Ole Miss went the distance in Oxford earlier this season. The Tigers used a career-best 60 assists from Malorie Pardo and ripped 12 kills on a scorching .556 hitting ratio in the deciding frame.
“LSU and Ole Miss is always a tough, grind it out style of match,” head coach Fran Flory said. “It doesn’t matter what the records are going in. Certainly, Ole Miss starting the second half of SEC play is probably going to be a dangerous team in our league. They have a bunch of great athletes. When they get going, they are going to be really hard to defend and really hard to beat. We have to be prepared. LSU and Ole Miss is a fun rivalry, and Sunday will be another exciting chapter.”
Pardo enters Sunday’s match the SEC’s leader in assists per set after a 47-helper performance and fueled Desiree Elliott along with Michele Williams to double figure kills versus Alabama. Elliott’s 3.57 kills per set leads the Tigers and ranks sixth in the SEC, while Williams is 32 spikes away from becoming the 18th player in program history to reach 1,000 career kills.
LSU’s defense is sparked by Meghan Mannari, who ranks second and has corralled 4.54 digs per set. She has collected 10 or more digs in nine of her 10 SEC appearances.
Live stats for Sunday’s match are offered inside the Geaux Zone on LSUsports.net. In-match updates also are available via the program’s social media outlets at http://twitter.com/lsuvolleyball or LSU Volleyball on Facebook.
The Ole Miss contest is the second of two “Student Point Matches” and the first 500 students will receive LSU volleyball pint glasses.
For every home match, LSU volleyball will be collecting books as part of its season-long book drive,
“Geaux Books”, to benefit the Everybody Reads Program through Volunteer in Public Schools. Fans are asked to bring new or used elementary level books to help local students.