BATON ROUGE, La. – Three points away from pushing the match into a fifth set, the LSU volleyball team was looking to hold serve and put the opposition on the ropes, but not before No. 9 Florida rallied back to score the next seven in a row and close out the match defeating the Tigers in four sets, 25-12, 23-25, 25-11, 25-22 Friday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
For the second straight match, the Tigers (5-7, 0-3 SEC) were on the brink of pushing a league opponent to a critical fifth set, but instead had to scramble and attempted to regroup before it was too late and the comeback had been seized by the other side.
“This is one we’ll look back and say kind of got away from us,” head coach Fran Flory said. “We had a great chance against these guys. We had the right matchup, we had the right opportunity and we just couldn’t finish.”
The high-powered offense of the Gators (9-3, 3-0) proved to be too much for LSU to handle in the end, as the Gators hit .325 on the night to LSU’s .117. Florida hit no less than .220 in any of the four sets on the night, while the Tigers hit above .100 just twice.
Briana Holman led all players with 17 kills and seven blocks in the defeat, hitting .419 against the Gators, while freshman Gina Tillis finished with a season best 15 kills, four digs and two blocks in earning the first start of her career on Friday.
“I’ve definitely been getting more confidence,” Tillis said. “I was a little nervous and I didn’t know if I could make it with the big girls in the SEC. But now I’m getting more confident.”
Malorie Pardo dished out 40 assists for LSU to go along with her seven digs and lone service ace, with Haley Smith leading the team in digs with 17.
Florida finished with three players in double figure kills, led by Alex Holston’s 16 on a .452 hitting clip. Gabby Mallette finished with 12 and hit .524, while Rhamat Alhassan had 10 kills and six blocks.
Mackenzie Dagostino finished the night with 44 assists, five aces, five digs and two blocks for the Gators, with Holly Pole leading all players with 18 digs.
The visitors came out firing on all cylinders, hitting .500 as a group while forcing LSU into 10 attack errors to just eight kills, as Florida raced out to a big lead and never looked back in taking the first set 25-12. Holman accounted for four of LSU’s eight kills in the set, while Florida had six players finish with a kill or more.
LSU came out a much more focused team in the very next set, battling through 14 ties and five lead changes in the second, the most of both throughout the rest of the match. With the match tied at 19, the Tigers rattled off the next three in succession thanks to a Katie Lindelow kill, Tillis and Holman block and Florida block error to force a Florida timeout with LSU up 22-19.
Another kill by Tillis out of the timeout made it 23-19, as after a Gator kill, a Mimi Eugene service ace put LSU at set point put up 24-20. Florida didn’t make it easy as they stole the next three points to force a Tiger timeout up by just one, eventually coming out of the break with a Tillis kill to make it 25-23 in favor of LSU to split the match at 1-1.
The momentum seemed to swing back to the Gators after the intermission, as Florida scored seven of the first eight points from the opening serve to force an LSU timeout up 7-1 to open the third. Although Tillis was able to reap four kills in the set for the Tigers, she proved to be the bulk of the offense while Florida got another balanced attack to go up as many as 20-8 before closing out the set 25-11.
A fresh flip of sides signaled another positive start for LSU in the fourth, as the team finished with more kills than Florida in a 15-12 advantage. Lindelow earned five of her seven kills on the night in the fourth alone, hitting .833, while Holman also had five and a .500 attack percentage as well.
Although going up 8-4 to force Florida to call its first timeout of the set, LSU would not be let off the hook that easily as the Gators came back to take the lead to produce a tense see-saw battle from that point on. After a 15-15 draw, the Tigers went to work outscoring the Gators 7-3 to make it 22-18 with Florida reeling. Using its final timeout, Florida would make all the necessary changes from that point to close out the match by getting the final seven points to pull out the match for good.
In those final seven points alone, LSU hit into four blocks, with an unforced error and a service ace against them to just one solitary kill for Florida during that run.
“We tend to make silly errors or expect other people to make plays instead of taking ownership and taking the ball and running with it,” Flory said. “Either way, we just need to continue to grow and get better, but out upperclassmen need to step up in those roles for sure.”
LSU will be back in action on Sunday afternoon, hosting the Arkansas Razorbacks at 1 p.m. in Baton Rouge. The game will be streamed live on SEC Network+.
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