It’s been just over a month since the No. 10 Florida volleyball team was put in a position it had never been in before.
It’s not very often that a Mary Wise-coached team will leave a court knowing that they were outplayed. But even a team that has dominated the SEC for the past 18 years has come to know that feeling. It happened when Florida found itself sitting on the wrong end of a sweep at Louisiana State for the first time in Wise’s reign.
The lessons the Gators learned that day in Baton Rouge were ones that they have taken to heart, as evidenced by their run of eight straight sweeps since the defeat. On Friday at 7 p.m., the Gators will get their chance to show the No. 19 Tigers how far they have come.
“We’ve come leaps and bounds since the last time we played LSU,” said junior Brynja Rodgers.
Even though the Gators are approaching the match as if they have something to prove, they are not going so far as to look at the match with eyes of revenge. They know that they have bigger goals in mind than to simply win the next match.
“We don’t look at it as getting revenge,” said senior Elyse Cusack. “We look at it as controlling our own destiny and winning the SEC. Every single match matters at this point. It’s just another match on the road to where we want to be at the end of the season.”
But the match did teach them one thing, which was that winning is contagious, and even if they do not say they want revenge, they do not want to be put in that position again.
“Whenever you lose, you’re super, super hungry to win the next few matches and we have,” Rodgers said. “We’ve won a lot of matches since LSU. So that’s a good feeling going into it. I don’t want to say revenge but that’s almost what you want.”
What the Gators don’t want is to feel how they felt after the loss to LSU the first time around.
“No one likes the feeling of losing,” said sophomore Cassandra Anderson. “We’ve just been working hard in practice so that we never have that feeling again.”
The key to the Gators not suffering through a tough loss the second time around will be shutting down a powerful LSU offense that ran through the Florida defense in the first meeting to the tune of 56 kills for a .333 attacking percentage. The numbers marked only the second time a team hit over .260 against the Gators (Washington, who also swept Florida, hit .359) and were by far the most number of kills the Gators surrendered in a three-set match.
Florida’s players admitted that they did not play their best in the loss, committing many unforced errors, something that they have made a point to correct over the past month. But they also know that LSU played out of their minds in the match.
“As well as LSU played, I’m not sure even if we played our best if we could have beaten them,” Wise said. “They played that well that they could have beaten just about anybody in the country that night.”
The Gators know there is no guarantee that the Tigers won’t play at that level again, but they say that they are much more prepared the second time around. They have changed their defensive schemes over the past month, adding in new wrinkles and improving both individually and as a team. But they have also focused on improving digging and blocking.
The focus of that improvement is geared towards stopping Britnee Cooper, the Tigers’ 6-foot-3 towering middle blocker who leads the team in kills at 3.44 a set and blocks at 1.39 per set. In the first match, Cooper was virtually a one-woman wrecking crew, notching 18 kills on a .692 attacking percentage to go along with four block assists.
“It’s the same thing you see in basketball,” Wise said. “If a player gets the ball down low, they’re tough to defend. Similarly, when Britnee gets the ball up high she’s tough to defend. She will get hers. She’s done that consistently all season. What we just hope is that she doesn’t get as many attempts, and of those attempts, not all of them are kills.”
The Gators have prepared for Cooper by having volunteer assistant coach Chris Keen play as Cooper in practice, but as the Gators saw the first time around, her talents are not only hard to stop but also hard to emulate.
“I’m not sure he could even do that,” said senior Elyse Cusack. “But he’s been trying. I think now going into it we know what we’re getting into and it’s going to take a lot more than what we gave last time. I’m not sure that we prepared as much as we should have the first time for Britnee Cooper. She is an amazing athlete.”
The Gators also have to watch out for Tiger setter Sam Dabbs, who Rodgers called “deceptive” and racked up 49 assists in the first meeting.
In order to counter the Tigers’ strengths, Florida is also planning on showing LSU some new looks, including some tactics that they haven’t used before.
“We’ve been adding different attacks to our arsenal,” Rodgers said. “We have a lot of things that are different that LSU hasn’t had a chance to scout yet. We’re going to give them something they’re not ready for.”
Whatever new tricks the Gators pull from their sleeves is sure to be enough to change the outcome this time around. But most importantly, their desire to never be in the position they were at the end of the first meeting will be the driving force in how the match is decided.
SEC VOLLEYBALL STANDINGS
EASTERN DIVISION
SEC Overall
Kentucky 14-1 24-2
Florida 14-2 20-3
Tennessee 12-3 19-6
Georgia 6-9 15-11
South Carolina 5-11 13-12
WESTERN DIVISION
SEC Overall
Louisiana State 14-2 20-5
Auburn 6-9 14-12
Arkansas 5-10 11-15
Alabama 5-11 7-19
Mississippi 2-13 8-17
Mississippi State 2-14 6-21
SCHEDULE
Friday, Nov. 13
Louisiana State at Florida, 7 p.m.
Kentucky at Georgia, 7 p.m.
Tennessee at Auburn, 7 p.m.
South Carolina at South Carolina State, 7 p.m.
Mississippi at Alabama, 8 p.m.
Arkansas at Mississippi State, 8 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 14
Louisiana State at South Carolina, 1:30 p.m.
Tennessee at Georgia, 2 p.m.
Arkansas at Alabama, 2 p.m.
Mississippi at Mississippi State, 2:30 p.m.
Kentucky at Auburn, 2:30 p.m.
Friday, Nov. 20
Florida at Tennessee, 7 p.m.
South Carolina at Kentucky, 7 p.m.
Auburn at Arkansas, 8 p.m.
Mississippi State at Louisiana State, 8 p.m.
Georgia at Mississippi, 8 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 22
Florida at Kentucky, 1:30 p.m.
South Carolina at Tennessee, 1:30 p.m.
Alabama at Louisiana State, 2:30 p.m.
Georgia at Arkansas, 2:30 p.m.
Auburn at Mississippi, 2:30 p.m.
AVCA POLL
The American Volleyball Coaches Association rankings for Nov. 9:
1. Penn State (26-0); 2. Texas (19-1); 3. Hawaii (23-2); 4. Washington (20-3); 5. Illinois (20-3); 6. UCLA (19-6); 7. Stanford (16-7); 8. Iowa State (20-4); 9. Nebraska (18-6); 10. Florida (20-3).
11. Kentucky (24-2); 12. California (15-8); 13. Minnesota (19-7); 14. Michigan (20-7); 15. Florida State (23-2); 16. Oregon (16-6); 17. Southern California (15-9); 18. Arizona (17-7); 19. Louisiana State 20-5); 20. Saint Louis (19-6).
21. Baylor (20-6); 22. Northern Iowa (24-2); 23. St. Mary’s, Calif. (18-4); 24. Notre Dame (18-4); 25. (Tie) San Diego (16-6) and Washington State (16-8).