BATON ROUGE – After going 1-3 this weekend in Los Angeles against USC and UCLA, the LSU Beach Volleyball team fell to No. 4 in the latest AVCA Poll released Tuesday afternoon.
“Across the board there is improvement that needs to be made and every weekend that is evident,” head coach Russell Brock said Sunday. “This weekend was extra important for that feedback because you’re playing against the teams that matter most in the landscape of our sport.”
The Tigers have been featured inside the AVCA Top-Four for 20 consecutive polls, dating back to the Week 3 Poll of the 2019 season.
Despite going 1-3 over the weekend, the trip to California revealed that LSU can compete with any of the other three top-four teams in the nation. LSU, FSU, UCLA and USC have been the only teams in the top-four for the entire season. Florida State also went 1-3 against the same teams over the weekend. Both LSU and FSU went 1-1 at USC and 0-2 at UCLA. Every match in California was tightly contested.
“Clearly we knew it was going to be tight matches across the board in every round this weekend,” said Brock. “That’s what we expected that every match on every court was going to be tight and it was going to be really good volleyball played at a really high level.”
UCLA took over the top spot after a 4-0 weekend while both USC and FSU dropped one spot each to No. 2 and 3, respectively.
LSU dropped both matches Saturday at UCLA before splitting two matches at USC on Sunday.
“I think that that’s the character of our team,” said Brock. “We played better today against a team that is really strong and deep. I think we still left a bit on the table, but I’m glad it’s in the middle of the season and not in Gulf Shores in May.”
Week 6 AVCA Poll
Rank School (First place votes)
1 UCLA (9)
2 USC (6)
3 Florida State (1)
4 LSU
5 Loyola Marymount
6 Cal Poly
T7 Stanford
T7 TCU
9 Grand Canyon
10 Pepperdine
11 Cal
12 Arizona
13 FAU
14 Hawai’i
15 FIU
16 Long Beach State
17 Stetson
18 South Carolina
19 Georgia State
20 Florida Gulf Coast