STARKVILLE, Miss. – In the second-to-last match of the season, the LSU volleyball team started out of the gate hot offensively, but it wouldn’t be enough in the end to stop the Mississippi State Bulldogs as the Tigers fell 25-21, 26-24, 25-18 Wednesday night in Starkville.
LSU (9-19, 5-12 Southeastern) opened the match hitting .250 as a squad, hitting over .200 in each of the first two sets, but finished the evening hitting .168 with 30 kills. Mississippi State (16-15, 5-12) proved to get stronger as the match wore on, ending the night hitting .248 with 48 kills, hitting .361 in the final set alone.
Gina Tillis finished with 17 kills, hitting .308 in the match with four digs and an assists, accounting for 17 points for the Tigers. Lindsay Flory and Cheyenne Wood each finished with nine assists for LSU, with Flory having three kills and wood having two and five digs.
Haley Smith led the Tigers with 13 digs, followed by Mimi Eugene who had nine and Katie Lindelow with seven. LSU out-blocked the Bulldogs in the match 4-2, with Emily Ehrle, Olivia Beyer and Mimi Eugene with two each.
Alex Warren led all players with 18 kills for Mississippi State, followed by Evie Grace Singleton’s 15. Shelby Anderton had 27 assists, while Payton Harris had 18 digs for the Bulldogs.
The Tigers started the match well enough, getting kills from Ehrle and Tillis to take a 2-0 lead over the Bulldogs. After MSU got the next three, a service error tied the set at 1-1. From there, however, the LSU offense stalled as MSU went on to score the next six to take a 9-3 lead, forcing LSU into a timeout.
LSU looked to try and steal the momentum back from Mississippi State after falling behind, but after the Bulldogs outscored the Tigers 8-6, the team wound up calling its second timeout trailing 17-9.
Down 18-11, LSU mounted a furious comeback, going on a 9-3 run to put the pressure on the home side after pulling within one at 21-20, but the team would score one more point after that as MSU took the opener 25-21 to go up 1-0.
There were four ties within the first eight points of the second set, with LSU leading throughout that point. Tied at 4-4, LSU got kills from Eugene, Gibson and Flory to go up 7-4 and force a MSU timeout early in the stanza.
The lead would be short lived for the Tigers, as out of the timeout MSU scored five-straight, to come back and take its first lead of the set up 8-7, with an attack error leveling everything back up. It would be tied again at 9-9, before a three-point swing by MSU to go up 12-9, with LSU coming back with three of its own to knot the set at 12-12.
LSU called its first timeout of the set after the Bulldogs scored four of the next five to go up 16-13, as out of the break the Tigers got three consecutive points to tie the set at 16-all. After trading points, LSU broke an 18-18 stalemate by getting a Tillis kill and MSU attack error to go up 20-18 with the Bulldogs calling its final timeout of the set.
Once again, Mississippi State found a way to even the set, scoring the next three points to regain the lead and force LSU into using its final timeout. The 13th and 14th ties of the set came as LSU got kills from Tillis after MSU points to tie the set at 22-22. A kill from Eugene made it 23-22 LSU, but MSU came right back to tie it for the 15th time at 23.
The next tie meant extra points, as the two teams were knotted at 24-24, as it would be the final of the night as the Bulldogs weathered and earned the final two points it needed to go into the break up two, winning the second set 26-24.
16 total ties wouldn’t be enough in the second set, as the two teams returned to the court for the third and played to more stalemate’s early, as MSU would take the lead, only to watch as LSU came back to tie it at 4-4 and 5-5, with LSU getting an unforced Bulldog error and a kill from Flory to take a 7-5 lead and force MSU into a timeout.
Although Mississippi State would pull to within one at 7-6, the Tigers would score three of the next four to go up 10-7, keeping that lead at three by eventually going up 11-9.
The Bulldogs were unfazed by the deficit, scoring five of the next seven points to earn the lead going up 14-12 over LSU. The Tigers got three of the next four to tie the match again at 15-15, but consecutive points by MSU forced LSU into a timeout trailing 17-15.
Mississippi State would score three points out of the timeout to go up 20-15, as from that point on the home side was five points away from the match, holding LSU to just three more points for the rest of the set, taking the third to capture the sweep 25-18.
LSU closes the season on Friday night, taking on the Alabama Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa at 7 p.m. The match will be streamed live on SEC Network+.
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