The MSU volleyball team goes on its final road test today. State (8-21, 4-14 SEC) will play LSU (22-5, 16-2 SEC) at 7 p.m. in Baton Rouge, La., at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. LSU holds a season-best No. 17 national ranking. The Lady Bulldogs hope to build from recent success.
“Now, we’re starting to get stronger in a lot of areas, and that’s starting to produce more wins,” head coach Jenny Hazelwood said. “It’s definitely something that we want to finish strong in our last two because that’s the kind of stuff that’s going to carry over into next season as we’re continuing to build this program.”
The Maroon and White carry momentum from its season-first sweep in SEC weekend matches. In 3-1 wins, State defeated Arkansas on Friday (25-15, 25-14, 21-25, 25-13) and Ole Miss on Sunday at the Newell-Grissom Building (25-21, 19-25, 25-22, 25-21), which completed a season series sweep of Ole Miss.
“We definitely had a solid weekend all the way around,” Hazelwood said. “We passed extremely well, which allowed us to run our offense, and we served really tough. And that got our opponents out of system this weekend.”
The wins were a major confidence builder, and the team hopes to continue the improvements, senior setter Dorey Gray said. In the Ole Miss match, Gray set a career-high 49 assists.
“We’ve always known that we were good, but just getting two wins off of two good teams, even though the win was tough against Ole Miss, we know that we can do it,” she said.
The Tigers have recorded an impressive record, winning seven straight, twice defeating defending SEC champion Florida and winning 15 of its last 16 matches.
In the first match against LSU, coach Hazelwood said LSU’s jump servers did not let MSU pass efficiently, which lead to a breakdown in the offense. Defending tough serves is an area she said she felt her team had definitely improved.
“[LSU] is a really great serving team, so we’re going to have to work as hard as we possibly can just so that we can run our offense,” she said. “Aside from that, we’re going to have to serve well. They’ve got some offensive weapons, so we’re going to have to do our best to minimize their very talented offense, and a large part of that takes place in the serving game.”
Should the Tigers fear an upset?
“Heck yeah, they should,” senior outside hitter Ioanna Demian said. “As Coach is saying, as long as we practice hard there will come the opportunity to carry that with us in the game, so we might as well keep practicing hard.”
In the SEC, a team cannot take any match lightly, Hazelwood said. LSU has had success because of this mentality.
“[LSU] knows that we’re coming off of a huge weekend for us, and our girls are going to be real confident,” she said. “They are going to have to make sure they don’t take us for granted because you know they are looking to finish their season strong and go into the NCAA tournament.”