BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU volleyball team opens its longest stretch of home games on Friday evening, hosting the No. 9 Florida Gators at 6 p.m. inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on the SEC Network.
LSU’s extended stretch of home matches marks three contests in six days for the Tigers, as the team will have a day off before preparing for the Arkansas Razorbacks on Sunday afternoon, before closing out the string with Mississippi State next Wednesday night. Paul Sunderland will handle play-by-play duties, joined by Nell Fortner providing color for Friday’s match.
Along with a highly-ranked opponent, the match will also serve as one of the four Friday Night Meal Deal promotions that will be carried out throughout the rest of the regular season, as fans can reserve a special set of menu items for that specific match. Friday’s menu includes blackened shrimp pasta with chef du jour vegetable, and is available for just $10 with orders being accepted until 3 p.m. Thursday at promotions@lsu.edu.
With a full five days in between matches, the LSU volleyball team will have enough time to continue to make adjustments to its lineup, while also getting ready for another ranked foe on the docket in the Gators on Friday. By looking at the current AVCA Top 25 poll, the Tigers have played four teams currently ranked, with Florida being the fifth and Texas A&M possibly being the sixth later this season. Even Alabama, who LSU played this past Sunday, is starting to receive votes in the poll beginning this week.
LSU will be looking to rebound from its 0-2 start in league play, hoping to take some of the fight the team had in its epic fourth-set, 35-33, finale against the Crimson Tide on Sunday and turning it into a catapult into a fresh weekend against two teams that are both entering the week undefeated against conference competition.
“I am expecting this group to come out this week driven and ready to go,” head coach Fran Flory said. “We were standing on the brink and know that we were a couple of plays away from pushing it to five and having an opportunity to win. I’m not saying if we would have won the fourth and that we would have gone on to win the fifth, but to extend it and have the chance is all we really needed to do to put ourselves in a good position going forward.”
For much of the season, the Tigers have been battling through sets in which they’ve had an opportunity to go up or force a deciding set, only to come up short and suffer a defeat. Of the 11 matches this season, eight have been four sets and two have gone to five. In the last three matches alone, the Tigers have dropped the opening set, only to take the second to force a split heading into the intermission break.
One of the team positives to come out of the weekend has been LSU’s penchant for stuffing the opposition’s attacks at the net in the blocking game, none more impressive than the team season high 17 against Alabama. The 30 block assists by the group in the match is tied for the eighth most by an LSU team in a match, as the 2.62 blocks per set average is 35th in the country, and 3.38 in the two league matches is tops.
Individually leading the charge is sophomore Briana Holman, who secured her first double-double of the year with her 17 kills and 12 blocks against the Crimson Tide. Currently third in the country individually in blocks, she has led the team in kills all but three times, while earning double-digit blocks in two of the last three.
One of the things the team has been able to accomplish is getting through matches with a patchwork of different players earning some sort of action during the length of the match. Only Cati Leak, Holman, Mimi Eugene, Malorie Pardo and Haley Smith have been a part of the starting group for all 11 matches, which also feature seven starts for Katie Lindelow and 10 for Madi Mahaffey during that time as well.
Leak continues to produce in a wealth of facets, averaging 2.89 kills per set and 2.11 digs per set on the season, while also having 11 services aces which is second on the team. Lindelow and Eugene are averaging nearly two kills per set between the two and Mahaffey with over 30 blocks.
Pardo has led the team in every match in assists having 28 against Alabama, but with a bit of a change is also getting some help in the rotation in the form of Elly Ogle, who had 11 assists in the match on Sunday.
Smith is currently sixth individually in digs in the league averaging exactly four per set, while this past weekend she averaged 4.62 which is second overall in league matches.
A couple of key pieces also returned to the arsenal, as Emily Ehrle played in her first match of the season, earning four kills with three blocks and two digs, while Helen Boyle came on to play in all four sets to earn eight kills, six digs and three blocks.
The Gators will be another strong test for the team this season, coming into the match 8-3 on the year and winners of their last three. The team picked to win the league’s regular season championship with three preseason All-SEC picks swept both Auburn and Ole Miss over the weekend, earning two of their six sweeps this season.
Florida is led by freshman Rhamat Alhassan, a middle blocker who is hitting .503 on the year and has already earned the SEC’s Offensive Player of the Week and Freshman of the Week awards. Statistically, Alex Holston leads the team averaging 3.49 kills per set, while this week’s defensive player of the week for the league in Holly Pole averages 3.34 digs per set for UF.
The Tigers will be going for their first win over Florida since the 2009 championship season, as those are the only two wins LSU has over the Gators in 26 meetings since 1998. Since those wins, LSU has only managed taking one set off of Florida five times in the last seven contests.
For all of the latest news and information on Tiger volleyball, visit www.lsusports.net/volleyball. Fans can also follow the program on its social media outlets at www.Facebook.com/lsuvolleyball along with @lsuvolleyball and @lsucoachfran on Twitter and @lsuvb on Instagram.