Mississippi State
Florida
No. 14 Gators Turn Back Stern Challenge From Bulldogs
November 21, 2008 | Volleyball
? Official Statistics GAINESVILLE, Fla. - The 14th-ranked Florida Gators (22-3, 16-2 SEC) survived an opening-set scare from Mississippi State (6-23, 1-17 SEC) and went on to register a straight-sets win (25-23, 25-16, 25-20) over the Bulldogs before 2,552 fans at UF's Stephen C. O'Connell Center. MSU junior Ioana Demian turned in an impressive performance against the 17-time defending SEC champions. On a .273 hitting performance, Demian registered a match-high 15 kills, her third double-figure kills total in the last four matches. The Bulldogs also turned in one of their stronger performances at the net. Mandy Mellencamp had four block assists and Demian and Newsome added three each as MSU matched Florida in total team blocks 7-7. "Our kids played hard tonight, and our freshmen didn't back down against one of the nation's top programs," said head coach Tina Seals. "Ioana did an excellent job hitting tonight, and (setter) Dorey Gray did a nice job spreading the ball around. The team chemistry was good tonight and we had a lot of freshmen that stepped up and competed well in their roles. " State went toe-to-toe with Florida in the opening set. Demian tallied six kills and Ashley Newsome led a strong blocking performance in the set with three blocks. State reeled off five points with freshman Kelsey Nichols at serve, taking a 21-15 advantage on an ace by Nichols. Florida, after a pair of timeouts, went on a 7-0 run to knot the score at 21-21. Back-to-back kills by Demian gave the Bulldogs a 23-22 lead. But Florida scored the next three points, the third coming on a disputed set-ending touch call, to complete the opening-set comeback. MSU led briefly in the early going of the second set before a 6-1 Gator surge put Florida up 11-5. Demian tallied five kills in the set, but 10 hitting errors stymied the State attack in a 25-16 second-set setback. Florida bolted to an early 3-1 lead and never trailed in clinching the match with a 25-20 win in the third set. The Gators built up an solid lead at 19-11 before a spate of hitting UF errors let State back into the match and closed the gap to two points at 22-20. As it did in the opening set, the Gators closed out the set with three straight points, and again the set-winner was a disputed kill on a touch call against the Bulldogs. Kelly Murphy led Florida eight eight kills. Cassandra Anderson had four assisted blocks and Elyse Cusack a match-high 14 digs. The Bulldogs got nine digs from Floridan Dorey Gray and finished with a 33-28 edge. The Bulldogs close out their weekend SEC Eastern Division road run Sunday in Columbia, S.C, taking on the South Carolina Gamecocks in a 12:30 p.m. (CST) match at USC's Volleyball Competition Center. USC (20-8, 11-7 SEC), posted a 3-0 win (25-14, 33-31, 25-21) over Alabama Friday night in Columbia.
? Official Statistics (PDF)
