Midway through regular season play, the Mississippi State women’s volleyball team is looking ahead to upcoming matches with confidence, starting with this weekend as the team faces SEC teams South Carolina and No. 13 Florida for the second time.
With a 5-5 record in the Southeastern Conference, which is already two wins ahead of last season’s 3-17 conference mark, head coach Jenny Hazelwood said she is content with the team’s performance, but she also recognizes the upcoming obstacles on the road to the NCAA tournament.
“I’m pretty pleased with the overall result. Obviously, you can point at some matches and say, ‘If we could have done this or if we would have executed better,'” Hazelwood said.
Although the team suffered an 0-3 loss to Tennessee last week, libero Hillary Parker displayed a phenomenal performance with seven digs, which was higher than anyone else in the SEC over the weekend.
“I don’t think we can say enough about how great she did this weekend. She went head to head with two of the best liberos in our conference and out-dug them both. Phenomenal job defensively,” Hazelwood said.
Playing through an ankle injury last weekend, determined senior Caitlin Rance still managed 16 overall digs in addition to 16 kills against two ranked teams, Kentucky and Tennessee. Rance now has 302 kills for the season and at 997 is three away from 1,000.
Rance echoes the thoughts of her coach as she describes the competition of the upcoming away matches this weekend.
“I think we’ve definitely had our high points and low points. I think for the next round we need to focus on being consistently high,” Rance said. “If we work hard, we can compete with (Florida) and come out on top.”
In the previous 0-3 loss to Florida, Rance had only 7 digs and 5 kills. However, in the first match against South Carolina, she had 15 digs and 17 kills.
As the team searches for consistency, it depends on freshman middle blocker Lainey Wyman as she looks to maintain her constant and reliable play. Wyman has been awarded SEC freshman player of the week twice already this year and currently leads the Bulldogs in blocks and holds the number two spot in kills.
Despite the Gamecocks’ unimpressive 1-8 record in the SEC, Wyman said she believes the match against South Carolina will not be easily won and should not be overlooked.
“I think (their record) is deceptive. They’ve challenged other SEC teams, they just haven’t won. We’re all going to respect them,”  Wyman said. “Any SEC team could beat any other team on any given night. It’s just whoever wants it that night.”
Coaches and teammates agree with Wyman’s position.
“They’re better than their record indicates. We’re definitely going to have to be really focused and have a good game plan,” Hazelwood said.
This time last year, the Bulldogs had a mid-season record of 3-7 in the Southeastern Conference.