Mississippi State volleyball (6-19, 2-12 SEC) is set to play SEC foe Tennessee (17-6, 10-3 SEC) today at 6 p.m. in Knoxville and will take on No. 11 Kentucky (22-2, 12-1 SEC) Sunday in Lexington.
For the Bulldogs, last Friday’s 3-1 win against South Carolina (12-11, 4-10 SEC) and a very close three-sets loss to No. 9 Florida (18-3, 12-2 SEC) on Sunday, showed the team’s potential.
Head coach Jenny Hazelwood said the team is not going to lay down at this in the season after coming so far this season.
“These girls are still fighting and they want to win all the matches that we have coming up. So they’re going to be playing to win,” she said. “They’re not out there just to get through the season. They are fighting for every point.”
MSU did not fare well against Tennessee or Kentucky earlier in the season, dropping straight-set losses to both, but the Bulldogs will look to maintain strong team chemistry in order to get a win.
“If we play like we did last weekend, I think we can totally take Tennessee and give Kentucky a run for their money,” senior setter Dorey Gray said.
Today’s matchup against the Lady Vols will pose an offensive threat as the Bulldogs will look to shutdown junior outside hitter Nikki Fowler who is coming off a 24-kill performance against Arkansas on Sunday, giving her 302 for the season.
“That’s kind of who their whole system is based around, giving this girl the ball and putting her into position to score for them,” assistant coach Branden Higa said.
The Bulldogs’ defense will be tested after weekend matches in which they out-blocked opponents 16-10 along with 41 digs by junior libero Kayla Woodard.
Tennessee is ranked second in the SEC in both digs (16.12/set) and blocks (2.58/set), led by senior libero and SEC digs leader Chloe Goldman (408 digs) and senior middle blocker Farren Powe (103 blocks).
Kentucky will pose the biggest test of the latter part of the season for the Bulldogs as the Wildcats look to capture the SEC title with a half-game lead over Florida and snap the Gators’ 18-consecutive conference title run.
“They’re one of the most well-trained defensive teams that we play in our conference,” Hazelwood said. “They make it really tough to put a ball down. We’ve got to make sure that we’re in system a lot so that we can get as much advantage as we can.”
The Wildcats are led by junior outside hitter Sarah Mendoza (384 kills) and senior setter Sarah Rumley (1,049 assists), both SEC leaders in their respective categories.
MSU will look to improve with this weekend’s matches as the team is looking to finish the season as strong as possible.
“We finally proved to ourselves that we are as good as we’ve been thinking we are and we finally found that groove of playing together,” Gray said. “I think we’ll just take it and run with it. We’ve set that standard, and we don’t want to fall below it.”
Junior middle blocker Ashley Newsome leads the Bulldogs with 269 kills and enters the weekend with an SEC-leading 19 solo blocks.
Gray tallied 73 assists and 28 digs against the Gamecocks and Gators, obtaining her third and fourth double-doubles of the season and now ranks ninth on MSU’s all-time career assists chart with 1,197.