LSU’s weekend series against Tennessee was an important matchup between two teams jockeying for an NCAA Tournament berth, both in danger of being on the bubble on Selection Sunday.
Both teams had a reason to fight, but it was Tennessee who showed much more passion and competitiveness, winning both of the weekend’s games with ease and dropping only one set across the two days.
The Volunteers have played almost the entire season without their star middle blocker Danielle Mahaffey, who was an AVCA All-American Honorable Mention last year. She suffered an injury in the team’s exhibition game, but the matches with LSU represented her second and third games back with the team.
“Her offense that she provides in the middle takes pressure off their pins, and it opens up a lot of things for their pins. She makes them a much better team, and she’s kind of been the leader of that group for the last couple years, so to have her back at this time in the season is critical for them,” said LSU Head Coach Tonya Johnson.
Even without Mahaffey, Tennessee was No. 4 in the SEC in kills per set, led by pin hitters Erykah Lovett and Morgahn Fingall, the conference’s individual leader in that stat. With the return of Mahaffey, the Volunteers’ already formidable offense became even more challenging to defend.
The first match on Saturday saw LSU get swept for only the third time all year. The other two sweeps, however, offered some sort of moral victory. Against Penn State, LSU took the final two sets to extras and was highly competitive against a ranked team despite being only six games into the Johnson era. Facing Kentucky, LSU lost in three, but the Tigers were coming off a stunning upset against the Wildcats the day prior and still pushed them to the brink in a 30-32 second set.
There was no solace to be had here. All year, the main thing Johnson has asked of her team is to be competitive, to battle against every opponent. LSU showed very little fight against Tennessee.
The next day’s match ended in a 1-3 loss for LSU, including its worst set loss of the season in a 12-25 third set.
Tennessee’s offense met no resistance during the weekend, with Fingall, Lovett and Mahaffey notching 43, 28 and 14 kills on hitting percentages of .422, .339 and .500. The Volunteers’ hitters attacked with power and precision that made it difficult for the LSU back row to anticipate and position themselves for the dig.
Tennessee made a point of keeping their attacks away from LSU’s sophomore libero Ella Larkin, who has been its anchor defensively all year and leads the SEC in digs. Larkin had only 16 digs in the two games, including a season-low three digs in the first match.
Instead, the Volunteers put pressure on LSU’s other back row defenders and found success doing so. As a result, LSU’s first contact was poor, and their pass was getting their offense off schedule. Even usually reliable senior defensive specialist Jill Bohnet struggled in that regard, leading to her being benched for the final two sets of Saturday’s match.
“I don’t think Jill passed very well on Saturday. Jill makes things happen for us when she’s in. Just from an emotional standpoint, energy and competitive standpoint, she brings it every match. It showed on Sunday when we put her back in that we need her on the court, we need her voice, we need her defense, we need all of that. We’ll figure out the passing stuff as we always do, we’ll see what happens,” Johnson said.
On the other side of the ball, LSU put together a hitting percentage of only .134 across the two games despite Tennessee coming into the game allowing the most kills per set and the highest hitting percentage in the SEC. Johnson attributed that to poor timing between the setters and the hitters.
“What we’ve been working on this week is getting our setters back setting a true go to our outsides, so that they’re not early and under the ball, which we saw a lot of last weekend.”
That has affected star outside hitter Sanaa Dotson as well, as she’s hit under .200 in each of her last four matches. She’s also been held under double digit kills in two of those matches (nearly three, having notched 10 on Sunday).
“I do think we can put her in a little bit better situation from a setting standpoint and give her some options. But she’s got to drive hard, and she’s got to go get that ball like she was doing early in the season. I don’t feel like we’ve had that from her the last few matches,” said Johnson.
LSU’s performance against Tennessee, perhaps its worst of the season, came at an inopportune time. The Tigers have now lost three straight matches as they head into the final stretch of their schedule. That late-season swoon has seen LSU drop from No. 28 to No. 38 in the NCAA’s RPI rankings. For a team seeking to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017, a strong close is crucial, and Johnson called LSU’s upcoming match at Missouri on Saturday a must win.
It might be tempting for LSU to be content and give up at this point in the season, given that the team was never really supposed to be this close to the Tournament. With a first-year head coach and a reworked roster that lost two All-SEC contributors, it would have been reasonable to expect LSU to take a step back from its 13-14 record a year ago. Instead, LSU has matched that win total with four regular season matches to go.
Johnson certainly wouldn’t be satisfied with accepting where LSU is now, not on the verge of her first Tournament appearance as a head coach since 2009.
“We gotta go execute and do the things that we’ve done well all season long up until these last couple weeks. We cannot be the team this weekend that we were last weekend. That can’t happen, or it’s not going to end the way we want it to.”
