BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU volleyball team opens up a pair of road matches beginning Friday, traveling first to take on the Tennessee Volunteers at 6 p.m. inside Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville.
Friday’s contest will be streamed online live through SEC Network+, available through WatchESPN for desktops, smartphones, tablets and streaming media players. Links to video and live stats for the match will be available at LSUsports.net, with updates provided through the team’s social media pages on Facebook and Twitter.
The Tigers head into the contest with the Vols with an overall record of 9-11 and 5-4 in the Southeastern Conference, coming off of a thrilling, five-set win over the Auburn Tigers last Sunday in Baton Rouge. LSU closes the month of October in Knoxville, but opens its most grueling stretch of games to close the year as the squad will play six of its final nine matches in opposing venues.
Although the team has reached its most challenging stretch, it goes with a full tank of confidence as the Tigers weathered and battled to one of its best performances of the season on Sunday, snapping a two match losing skid in the process and remaining in the top half of the SEC going into the final weeks of the year.
“As a coach, you always want those type of matches in the front half of the season, but it’s great that our team is still playing hard knowing that they still have a lot to play for,” head coach Fran Flory said. “I’m proud of their effort, and when you look at some of the plays we made in that game, you can tell that our athleticism is matching our intensity and we’re not holding back.”
In the second-longest match of the season, the Tigers produced a season-high 66 kills as a team, while defensively matching their highest dig output of the year with 99 and finishing a block shy of tying their team season best with 13 in the victory.
It was the 10th five-set match for LSU in SEC play since the 2014 season began, earning its third victory of the season going the distance, while improving to 4-2 at home in league play. The Tigers were able to split the season series with Auburn, handing the visitors a tough road defeat after LSU fell in five at Auburn earlier this month.
LSU hit .208 as a team in the match, powered by three hot-hands in the form of Gina Tillis, Cati Leak and Mimi Eugene, as all three finished the day with over 15 kills, just the second time this year the team has had three do so. Tillis finished with 19, hitting a new career-high .486 with just two errors, while Leak earned her 10th double-double of the season with 17 kills and 17 digs and Eugene producing a career-high 16 on a match-high 62 swings, adding 14 digs for her second double-double of the season.
Coming on strong during key stretches, and helping power that offensive haul for the Tigers, has been freshman Lindsay Flory, who led the team in assists for the second consecutive match, as she and sophomore Cheyenne Wood each had more than 20 for the third time this season. Flory finished with 28 in the win, a new career-high, while Wood finished with 26. Flory has now had three matches with at least 20 assists, while Wood has earned double figure assists in all but one match this season.
Accounting for a third of the team’s digs alone, senior Haley Smith pieced together one of the best defensive performances ever in an LSU jersey, scooping up 39 in the victory to net a new career-high while also having the second most in a five-set match and third most in program history in a single game. With 1,470 digs, the Chalmette native is just 58 digs away from becoming the all-time leader in program history.
The final Tiger to earn double figure digs in the match was fellow senior Katie Lindelow, who has 918 for her career after netting her 13th double-digit dig match with 14 against Auburn, and could reach the 1,000-dig mark by season’s end.
The blocking tandem of freshman Olivia Beyer and senior Emily Ehrle finished 1-2 in blocks on Sunday and also sit that way in regular-season totals, as the duo combined for four of the team’s six solo blocks in the match. Ehrle finished with five and leads the team with 48, while Beyer led the match with six and is one behind on the year with 47.
LSU has won six of the last 10 meetings against Tennessee, including running its winning streak to four-straight over the Vols after a 3-1 victory in Baton Rouge just a few weeks ago. The Tigers will be going for the season sweep of Tennessee, and won in four last year in Knoxville.
“Tennessee is going to be much better prepared this time around, and certainly it will be easier for them to prepare since we’re playing in their building,” Flory said. “We’ve had some success there over the course of the last few years, and like most of our matches against them it’s going to come down to who can execute and which team can keep the ball off the floor.”
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.
AT A GLANCE – Tennessee
MATCH
LSU (9-11, 5-4 SEC) at Tennessee (19-6, 5-5 SEC)
DATE/TIME
Oct. 30 – 6 p.m. CT
FACILITY
Thompson-Boling Arena
AVCA RANKINGS
LSU – NR
Tennessee – NR
MULTIMEDIA
LSUsports.net – live stats
LIVE STREAM
SEC Network+
TV
None