BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU volleyball team will take its two-match winning streak on the road this weekend, traveling to take on the Tennessee Lady Volunteers Sunday afternoon at 12:30 p.m. inside Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville.
Sunday’s match will be streamed live on the conference’s SEC Network+ digital platform, which can be accessed on desktops on ESPN3 or through the WatchESPN app for tablets, smartphones and streaming players.
The Tigers open their longest road trip of the season beginning this weekend, playing the next four matches on the road beginning with the Lady Vols, as the next two weeks will have the team at Missouri, Kentucky and Ole Miss as well, before playing in front of their home fans toward the end of the month.
After dropping its first three matches of the SEC season, LSU has roared back to life with two big wins at home, with the most recent coming on Wednesday in the PMAC in a sweep of Mississippi State to improve to 7-7 on the season and 2-3 in the league. The Tigers will be looking to push their winning streak to three matches after Sunday, which would tie the longest for the squad this year.
“For us to be able to hold ourselves to that standard of not letting anything fall in any area against a team that was overmatched, is something we’ve been looking for, and I think something we finally got from the team as a whole on Wednesday night,” head coach Fran Flory said.
After the five-set win over Arkansas last Sunday, LSU was hoping to avoid another drawn-out contest on Wednesday, instead using the match as a clinic for what the group had been wanting to do as a whole all season in getting a host of people involved and playing about as perfectly as a team can in only three sets.
With it being just the second three-set match for the team this season, the Tigers moved to 5-1 on the year when winning the first set, while also hitting a season-high .368 on the night with just nine attacking errors in the contest. It was the first time this year that the group finished with less than 10 errors in the match, and the third time in the last three seasons an LSU team has achieved that feat against an opponent.
The Tigers completed the dominating effort by holding the Bulldogs to a .000 hitting percentage, earning 20 kills to 20 errors, while having just 17 assists. LSU’s nine team blocks were better that MSU’s five, as LSU also corralled 51 digs and added six service aces.
“If we go up against a team that makes a few more plays than us then that’s fine, but we haven’t put ourselves in a position like that until Wednesday,” Flory said. “The only way we were going to lose that match was if somebody was going to make a better play than we did and obviously that didn’t happen, and if we can step into every match like that, then we truly do control our destiny.”
If the last two outings were a sign of things to come, the program is going to be in good shape in the years going forward as the team got another standout performance from one of its freshman, this time in Mimi Eugene.
Eugene led all players with 15 kills against the Bulldogs, finishing with a .462 hitting clip as she was the only player to finish the night with double figure kills. It was her fourth double-digit kill match of the season, as she also had eight digs to nearly finish with a double-double.
Eugene was just one of the signature offensive performances of the night, as the team had two other players finish with a .400 average in Briana Holman who had eight kills and seven blocks, and Katie Lindelow who had six kills and 10 digs. Behind that, Cati Leak and Madi Mahaffey each hit .333, while Emily Ehrle came off the bench to get three kills and two blocks and Gina Tillis adding four.
Serving up the solid night was Malorie Pardo who earned her sixth double-double of the season with her 30 assists and 11 digs, becoming the first player since Lindelow last season to earn five service aces in the match, accounting for all but one against MSU. As she continues to climb the ladder of the career assist chart, she is also 28 digs away from becoming the 14th player in program history to earn 1,000 in a career.
Not too far behind and could also find her way into the 1000-dig club is Haley smith, who also had 11 on the year and has earned double-digit digs in every match for LSU this season. With 233 already this year, she currently has 843 in just three seasons, and could match or surpass her 500 from a year ago.
The Tigers go into another match with a team currently on a losing skid in the Lady Vols, who will take on No. 13 Kentucky on Friday before LSU on Sunday, in the midst of a four match losing streak. UT, along with Mississippi State, have yet to win a conference match this season, while ranking near the bottom in many of the league’s statistical categories.
LSU will be going for its second-straight win over the Lady Vols in Knoxville, as the Tigers snapped a four-match losing streak to Tennessee with a 3-2 win last season. Although UT holds the all-time series record, LSU is 13-11 against them since 1998.
“They are a young team and very talented athletically,” Flory said. “They have some really nice athletes who play high above the net, and they are a team that as the season has progressed has improved and gotten better a lot like us. They are always tough on their home floor, so this is going to be a great challenge for us, and if we can focus on our side then we will put ourselves in the best position possible.”
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.