The LSU volleyball team has played 421 points over the course of 10 sets since the first intermission of the Texas A&M game last week.
LSU coach Fran Flory and her team were on a seven-set losing streak and it appeared all the momentum they built earlier in the season was being lost.
But then something changed during the LSU’s locker room conversation in College Station, Texas. Something clicked, and since then the Tigers have pulled together an impressive three-match winning streak.
“I think we just had a realization in the locker room,” said senior middle blocker Desiree Elliott. “We just started attacking them, and once we figured out how good we could be and that’s what we could do, we just didn’t stop. We like that feeling.”
Junior outside hitter Helen Boyle said Flory laid into the team that day, showing them they needed to step up their game.
According to Flory, no player took those words more to heart than junior setter Malorie Pardo who’s posted 131 assists in the past three games for LSU.
“Malorie just decided she was going to let the passion she had inside of her out and share that,”
Flory said. “She was concerned that she’d come off as being mean or as not part of the team. I think her step of understanding that all she’s doing is being a demanding leader and she’s coming off correctly with that.”
Pardo is No. 3 in the Southeastern Conference in assists with 728 on the season.
This is the fourth time in five meetings that LSU has made the trip to the Auburn, with LSU winning by at least two sets each time.
Flory said she expects Auburn to have solid middle blockers and to attempt to stop the LSU offense with its athleticism, but Auburn ranks near the bottom of most SEC statistical categories.
Auburn may not have the most prolific stat line heading into Friday’s match, but Elliott said Auburn has often been a tougher match than it appears in recent years.
Flory echoed her player saying that she thinks Friday will be an athletic matchup between two talented programs.
“You don’t play a team like Auburn, who’s beaten Nebraska, and go in thinking it’s going to be an easy match,” Flory said. “They’re middles are athletic and when you have that level of athleticism, compared to a nice level of athleticism on our side, it’s going to make for a really
fun, interesting match.”