The volleyball team finished out its Southeastern Conferencehome matches with a bang this weekend. The Tigers swept Auburn inthree games on Friday night and defeated Alabama on Sunday. Theteam improved its record to 13-9 on the season and 5-8 in leagueplay.
LSU made adjustments on and off the court before Fridaynight’s match up. On the court, Daniela Romero started atsetter after sitting out a few matches from a spinal injury. SeniorRegan Hood was moved to the outside and led the match with 15kills.
“I think most importantly for us, Dee [Romero] did atremendous job running the offense today,” said coach FranFlory in a news release. “Dee is our offense. It’s likelosing your starting quarterback when she goes down. We changed ourlineup, we moved Regan to the outside and that was a nice changefor us.”
Many team members contributed to Friday night’s successover Auburn Flory said.
“I think [Melody Clark] did a great job. I think this wasan outstanding performance by Jelena [Mijatovic]. She hit .632,that’s one of the highest hitting efficiencies of an outsidehitter this year,” Flory said. “When you are outsideand hitting at that level, the goal is usually .225, so she waswell above that. Then with her serving, she completely took themout of their offense. When she is on, she is difficult tocontain.”
Each game was hard fought by both LSU and Auburn with many tiesthroughout two of the three games. But, in the end LSU came outwith the win with scores of 30-24, 30-26 and 30-12.
“This was a must win for us,” Flory said. “Wehad to have this match. We’ve got a lot of must wins comingup. This was a really important match. We didn’t put a lot ofemphasis on it. We put emphasis on executing on our side and takingcare of the ball.”
Sunday’s game against Alabama did not look as promisingwhen the Crimson Tide took the first game 27-30. The Tigersresponded taking the next three games with scores of 30-19, 30-23and 30-28 defeating Alabama for the first time this season.
The win was special for the team’s seniors, who playedtheir last home regular season game Sunday Flory said. The matchalso was significant for the team as a whole.
“This team plays well regardless,” Flory said.” On the road or at home, I don’t think it matters.They just like to play. They like to compete. I think that gettingAlabama, which is somebody we haven’t gotten in awhile, weare really proud of them that they came through and were resilientthrough this. I think all we can do now is continue to gainconfidence and get better and better.”
After celebrating its victory, the team took time out torepresent seniors outside hitter/middle blocker Regan Hood, setterBeth Cowley and libero Rachel Pittman.
“Senior nights are always really emotional and youdon’t know whether your team is going to come out reallyemotional or come out too spirited and feisty,” Flory said.”I think we came out very emotional in the first game, maybetoo aggressively.”
The Tigers will travel the next two weekends with hopes ofadding to its wins. Next weekend LSU travels to the University ofSouth Carolina on Friday before facing No. 16 Tennessee on Sunday.The following weekend the Tigers will spend the final games ofregular season and SEC play facing Arkansas and Ole Miss on theroad.