by Clyde Verdin
#LSUTopPlay - Oct. 7, 2015 Volleyball vs. Tennessee - Game Recap LSU 3, Tennessee 1 +0
BATON ROUGE, La. – In front of the largest home crowd of the season, the LSU volleyball team hit .255 as a group and had three players finishing with double figure kills as the Tigers held on to a 2-1 advantage and defeated the Tennessee Volunteers in four sets 25-19, 16-25, 25-21, 26-24 Wednesday night inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Two points away from closing out the match, the Tigers (7-9, 3-2 Southeastern) dug deep to thwart a late Tennessee comeback attempt to force a deciding fifth by breaking a 24-all tie with a block and a service ace to pull out the match and earn the victory.
“I thought our kids had the most level performance that we’ve had all year. We’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster,” head coach Fran Flory said. “We just absolutely had great poise and great composure that has not been evident all year. I think the balance of that—getting down in the fourth set—and staying the course and trusting the process. I think the confidence we gained from this match is tremendous.”
Nearly 1,500 fans at the Maravich Center saw a primetime performance between two teams looking to remain in the top half of the SEC, as LSU finished the night with 56 kills and a .255 average, led by freshman Toni Rodriguez and her 15 kills on .262 hitting and three blocks in the victory.
“We’ve practiced when we are down and have to come back,” Rodriguez said. “In the fourth set, we worked our way in and got in a rhythm. Usually when we lose the second set, we have a hard time bouncing back in the third, but today we came out fired up wanting to change that.”
Cati Leak finished right behind with her 14 kills, capturing the double-double with 12 digs to go along with her three blocks and three assists. Leak finished second on the team on the night with her 12 digs as she is now three shy of 1,000 for her career.
“Coming in, we knew we had to play our side to our best ability—the serve and pass game,” Leak said. “Tennessee is such a great opponent. Coming off of not as great of a season last year as they would have liked, they have just improved so much. Respecting them, we knew we had to stay focused and just trust the process for us.”
Gina Tillis was the final double-double producer on the night, earning 13 kills and 10 digs with two service aces and a block. The Tigers as a group finished with seven service aces to Tennessee’s two, as Tillis, Cheyenne Wood and Haley Smith each earned two on the night.
Wood finished with 28 assists while Lindsay Flory chipped in 18, as Katie Lindelow led the back row with 16 digs and five assists. Senior Emily Ehrle was a force at the net, leading all players with five blocks, two on the solo end, with four kills on a .333 average.
Bri Holmes finished with 22 kills for the Volunteers, as Lexi Dempsey had 53 assists. Bridgette Villano had 23 digs for Tennessee, as Kanisha Jimenez was the only player to earn a double-double with 16 kills and 12 digs, adding three blocks.
Wanting to set the tone early of how they wanted the match to go, LSU took the first set hitting .231 with 14 kills as a group in a balanced attack with Tillis, Leak and Rodriguez each having three kills and Ehrle and Olivia Beyer having two each. The Tigers only committed five errors in the entire set, keeping possession on a 12-for-20 set on sideouts.
Down 9-8, LSU forced the sixth tie of the match up until that point on a Beyer kill, earning two more points after that to go up 11-9. The Tigers turned that single-point deficit into an 8-2 run forcing Tennessee into a timeout trailing 16-11. LSU led by as many as seven points, fending off a Volunteer rally that saw the visitors pull within four before going on to take the opener 25-19.
Tennessee came out a new team in the second, hitting a strong .414 with 15 kills and only three errors, while LSU hit .162 with 11 kills and five errors. The Volunteers produced 17 digs to LSU’s nine in the frame, stuffing four shots as a group.
LSU broke an 11-all knot by getting a pair of unforced Tennessee errors to go up 13-11. After a UT point, a service error made it 14-12 LSU with the media break just one point away. However, The Volunteers scored five straight points to go up 17-14, forcing LSU into both of its timeouts before eventually going up 20-15. The Tigers would only get one more point from there, going into the intermission tied 1-1 after Tennessee took the set 25-16.
The third was the precursor for what ended up being an exciting fourth, as the two sides each finished with 15 kills on nearly 40 swings and each hitting above .250 in the stanza. Tennessee had 15 assists to LSU’s 14, and 16 digs for Tennessee to 15 for LSU. Each side also earned two blocks.
Although the Tigers would breeze out to a 6-1 advantage to force Tennessee into its first called timeout after the break, the set would prove to be much closer that that by the end, leading to six ties and two lead changes. Picking up at 20-20, a kill from Leak and attacking error by the Vols forced the opposition into calling its final timeout and would be the push the team needed to get over the hump, as LSU would hold UT to just one more point for the remainder of the set to win the third 25-21.
Being nearly flawless in the final set proved to be crucial for LSU, earning 16 kills on a .382 hitting clip, the highest totals in both categories for the squad on the night. The team only committed three attack errors and one service error, with the big factor late in being the four service aces for the Tigers in the frame.
Falling behind 4-1 and calling a break, Tennessee would be forced into one of theirs after being outscored 11-5 and trailing LSU 12-9. LSU led by as many as five and looked poised to put the squad on the brink, but things got tense as the Tigers got stuck at the 18-point mark and allowed Tennessee to claw back and make it a new set.
At a 21-21 stalemate, a kill from Rodriguez and a Katie Kampen service ace required Tennessee to call its final timeout to hold off suffering the loss. The Vols came out of the break scoring the next two to make it 23-all forcing LSU to call its final timeout. After trading the next two points to force extras, LSU was able to close the door with a combo block from Tiara Gibson and Rodriguez and Smith finding the space between two defenders for the ace to seal the match in favor of the Tigers at 26-24.
“We always know that it’s inside of us—that we can control our side more,” Leak said. “We just kind of fell through the past couple of games, close matches that we should have won, but going through that has forced us to continue to fight, and continue to trust in each other. We pulled through. We finally did our jobs.”
LSU will be back in action on Friday, October 16, hosting the Mississippi State Bulldogs at 7 p.m. inside the Maravich Center. The match will be streamed live on SEC Network+ available through WatchESPN.
For all of the latest news and information on Tiger volleyball, visit www.lsusports.net/volleyball. Fans can also follow the program on its social media outlets at www.Facebook.com/lsuvolleyball along with @lsuvolleyball and @lsucoachfran on Twitter and @lsuvb on Instagram.
