BATON ROUGE, La. – After more than a week away from competition, the LSU volleyball team wasted little time in shaking off the rust, breezing past the visiting Tennessee Lady Volunteers in four sets (25-14, 25-16, 21-25, 25-16) Friday night inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center to push its winning streak to 11 matches.
Although not having one of their typical performances offensively after hitting just .244, the Tigers (16-7, 11-3 Southeastern) were stout defensively by holding Tennessee (8-20, 1-13) to a .052 hitting clip on the night, as the Lady Vols hit into 15 total LSU blocks with 33 attacking errors and 10 service errors.
““I think that our blocking did a great job and certainly in the first set when we had eight blocks,” head coach Fran Flory said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a team have equal the number of kills and blocks in a set. That’s pretty impressive. It doesn’t speak too well to our offense but it certainly speaks highly of our defense.”
Sophomore Briana Holman led all players with 16 kills on the night, and nearly captured a double-double with nine blocks, four coming on the solo end. The DeSoto, Texas, native hit .538 against Tennessee, including drilling home six kills in the third set alone on just seven attempts.
Cati Leak and Gina Tillis each earned nine kills for LSU, followed by Mimi Eugene‘s six. Malorie Pardo led the night with 39 assists, while earning four kills on a .333 average with four digs and two blocks.
“If your quarterback has the flow, your offense can do nothing but have the flow,” Holman said. “I applaud Malorie for helping us because as hitters we didn’t necessarily have a flow because our defense wasn’t where it should have been. She did a really good job of fixing it, and the second set is when we started getting our focus. We started terminating the ball instead of keeping it in play.”
Haley Smith earned her eighth 20-plus dig match of the season on the night, finishing with a match-high 22, pulling within six of becoming the 15th player all-time to earn 1,000 in her career. She led a trio of players with double-digit digs as Leak had eight to go along with six blocks defensively, while Eugene had 14 with two service aces.
Kanisha Jimenez led Tennessee with 11 kills for Tennessee, while Taylor Johnson had 29 assists and 10 digs for the double-double, while Megan Hatcher had 17 digs for the Lady Vols. Tennessee hit in the negatives in two of the four sets, only hitting above .100 in the third, while accumulating just two team blocks against LSU.
The Tigers converted 80 percent of their sideout chances in the first set, as neither team came out strong offensively in combining only for 17 kills. However, Tennessee hit into 13 errors while LSU had only had three, as Tillis and Holman had three kills each individually for LSU.
LSU led throughout as they began the set by racing out to a 4-0 lead in the first set. After Tennessee pulled within one point of the Tigers at 11-10, LSU rattled off four consecutive points thanks to consecutive Holman kills, a Pardo kill and UT attack error to make it 15-10 to force a Lady Vols timeout. The break did little good as the Tigers led by as many as eight points up 20-12 and cruised to the 25-14 opening set victory.
The team never allowed Tennessee to even work up a game plan as LSU hit a blistering .414 in the second set, the highest for the team in any set on the night, with 14 kills to just two errors. Six different LSU players earned at least one kills, with three having at least three in the match, converting on an even better 81 percent on sideout opportunities.
After dropping the first two points of the set, LSU scored eight of the next nine to go up 8-3 and force a UT timeout. Again, Tennessee would have no answer for the Tiger attack as LSU would lead by as many as nine, going up 21-12, holding Tennessee to just four more points from that point on to take a 2-0 lead with a 25-16 set victory.
Looking for the sweep, Tennessee finally put together a cohesive attack, hitting .282 to LSU’s .171, finishing with one more kill than the Tigers in the frame as the two sides battled through eight ties and three lead changes. Holman’s big set wasn’t enough to help LSU overcome, even with a .857 clip in the frame alone.
With the third set tied at 12, Tennessee exploded for a 6-0 swing that put the visitors up 18-12, as it was 20-13 before LSU finally called a timeout. The Tigers were able to battle back to pull within three, but by that point the Lady Vols were at set point and finally earned the finishing blow on the third try to take it 25-21.
The fourth shut the door on UT’s chances at a comeback as the Tigers hit .250 with 12 kills to four errors, while the Lady Vols hit in the negatives for the second time on Friday with eight kills and 10 errors. Leak this time was the force with five kills, hitting .625 while Pardo served up 12 assists in the frame.
With only three ties and a single lead change early, LSU busted through a 5-all knot by outscoring Tennessee 5-1 to go up 10-6. The Lady Vols would only pull within two points from that point on as consecutive blocks to make it 19-12 forced Tennessee’s final timeout of the match. The Tigers pulled away easily and a Leak kill ended the night to make it 25-16 and hand LSU the win.
The Tigers will be back in action on Sunday afternoon, traveling to take on the Mississippi State Bulldogs at 1:30 p.m. in Starkville. The match will be streamed live on SEC Network+
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