It’s been a roller coaster of a season for LSU volleyball coach Fran Flory and her squad, as the Tigers consistently put together sets of brilliance next to streaks of disappointment.
LSU (15-8, 5-6 Southeastern Conference) hasn’t won consecutive matches in nearly a month, losing five of its last seven. But Flory said her team continues to rise and doesn’t believe what it’s shown this season is a final result just yet.
“The good thing for the roller coaster for me as a coach is, every time we go up, we get to a certain level, and then we’d have a confidence crisis or someone would get hurt and we’d go back down,” Flory said. “But we wouldn’t dip down quite as far and then we’d go back up higher.”
The Tigers need to find another peak on the ride tonight as SEC Western division rival Texas A&M comes to Baton Rouge seeking revenge for the home loss LSU handed the Aggies in September.
“I love [Texas] A&M, and I respect their tradition,” Flory — a former Aggies coach — said. “But there’s always that little extra edge in any of this. I’m glad they’re in the SEC because we get to play them all the time now.”
The last time LSU played Texas A&M, the Tigers walked out of College Station with a dramatic comeback victory on the road after being down 2-0 to start the match.
“We’re a different team now,” said junior outside hitter Helen Boyle. “At that point in the season we were still doing that a lot — starting off really slow and losing the first few [sets] and then coming back. Now we’ve kind of figured out how to start off stronger and I think that’s going to be a huge difference in this game.”
Two months later, in Flory’s eyes, the Tigers are coming off their most complete weekend of the season after defeating Georgia on the road before losing to No. 20 Kentucky in five sets in Lexington.
Boyle said the biggest improvement in recent weeks has been on the defensive side of the ball, as LSU has climbed the conference ranks in digs.
“This weekend we stepped up our defense,” Boyle said. “That’s something we used to take pride in was our defense and I think that’s stepped up so our offense can now too.”
According to Boyle, the improvement on defense stems from players going after more balls they thought they could never reach.
In the past two matches, the Tigers have accounted for 151 digs, pushing them to No. 4 in the conference.
Sophomore defensive specialist Haley Smith leads the team in the statistic with 339 on the season — good enough for No. 10 in the SEC with 3.77 digs per set.
“This team is really comfortable being uncomfortable,” Smith said. “We’ve talked about that throughout this season and we knew that we needed that this year because we weren’t as experienced as other teams that are at the top right now.”