Volleyball Begins SEC Play With Two Home Matches

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The South Carolina volleyball team begins SEC play this weekend with a pair of home matches. The Gamecocks host Mississippi State (4-9) Friday night at 7, then return to the Carolina Volleyball Center on Sunday for a 1:30 match against LSU (5-6). Friday’s match will be Military Appreciation Night, with free admission for military members and their families, and Sunday will have a post-match autograph session with the team. South Carolina enters conference play at 9-1 overall and 4-0 at home.

QUOTABLE: WEEKEND PREVIEW

GAMECOCKS CUT ROAD WEEKEND DUE TO HURRICANE FLORENCE
The team’s final non-conference weekend tournament in Richmond, Va. was cancelled, due to severe and unsafe conditions forecasted in association with Hurricane Florence. The Gamecocks were schedule to play in the VCU Invite, with matches against Toledo on Friday and Virginia and VCU Saturday.
 
SCOUTING MISSISSIPPI STATE
The Bulldogs dropped all three matches in their final non-conference weekend, moving their record back to 4-9 entering conference play under first-year head coach and former Gamecock assistant Julie Darty. State has 11 newcomers to the roster, but do return four starters from 2017. Offensively, four different hitters are averaging two or more kills per set, led by Amarrah Cooks’ 2.52, but the team as a whole is hitting just .185. The defense is holding opponents to a .188 hitting percentage, thanks in large part to its SEC-leading 15.35 digs per set. 
 
LAST TIME VS. THE BULLDOGS…
The Gamecocks ended the 2017 season with a 3-1 loss to Mississippi State. Mikayla Shields led the team with 19 kills and added 13 digs, and Courtney Koehler set a career high with 55 assists, but the defense could not slow down State’s senior Jelena Vujcin. She finished with 33 kills on 63 swings, hitting .381. The rest of Mississippi State’s offense combined for 18 kills and a hitting percentage of .052.
 
SCOUTING LSU
The Tigers have a split road weekend to begin SEC play, taking on Georgia Friday night in Athens before Sunday’s matinee with the Gamecocks. The team is riding a three-game win streak to close non-conference play, improving its overall record to 5-6. LSU is riding the arm of sophomore Taylor Bannister to guide the offense; the 2017 All-SEC honoree is accounting for more than a third of the team’s total kills (184 total, 4.60 per set). Four other Tigers are averaging 1.50 kills or more per set, and the return of Olivia Beyer to the lineup after missing four matches will provide key depth to the offense and the team’s blocking.
 
LAST TIME VS. THE TIGERS…
South Carolina lost 3-1 to LSU on Sept. 29 of last season. Alicia Starr and Mikayla Shields paced the offense with 10 kills each, and Aubrey Ezell added 20 digs. The Gamecocks took the opening set, 25-15, but dropped the final three as the Tigers hit over .300 in the match. Taylor Bannister (13 kills) and Jacqui Armer (11) led LSU’s offense.
 
MARYLAND INVITE (9/8-9/9) NOTABLES

• Courtney Koehler earned MVP honors for the tournament, and was joined by Mikayla Robinson and Mikayla Shields on the all-tournament team. 
• The Gamecocks hit .400 as a team against Liberty on Saturday afternoon, the highest mark of the season.
• In her 100th career match, Aubrey Ezell added 26 digs, three aces and three assists to the victory over Maryland. The senior libero has not missed a single set since joining the team in 2015.
• After totaling 49 digs over the course of the tournament, Ezell’s 1,190 career digs moves her up to sixth in the program’s all-time history. She is now six away from tying Amy Iannoccari (1991-94) for fifth.
• Shields added 13 digs to her 12 kills against Maryland, good for her third double-double of the season, which also moved her into 18th place in the Gamecocks’ career standings in the category with 19.
• Koehler’s 56 assists and 15 digs against the Terps are career highs for the junior setter.
• The Gamecocks were only aced by Colgate twice Saturday, its lowest amount of reception errors since their win over ETSU on Aug. 24. Conversely, Carolina now has at least six service aces in all but one match. 

GAMECOCKS EARN WIN #800
South Carolina’s 3-0 sweep of Clemson on Aug. 25 was the 800th victory in the program’s history. Along the way, the team has 17 season with 20 wins or more and seven appearances in the NCAA tournament.
 
MENDOZA BEGINS FIRST SEASON IN COLUMBIA
Tom Mendoza became the 13th head coach in Gamecock volleyball’s 46-year history on Jan. 3, 2018. Mendoza came to Columbia after two seasons as head coach at High Point University, where he led the Panthers to back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances. In 2017, the Panthers were in rare company as a mid-major program earning an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. In the postseason, Mendoza was named the Big South’s and AVCA Southeast Region’s Coach of the Year. 
 
Before taking over at High Point, Mendoza helped lay the foundation for one of the top indoor program in the country, at Creighton. During his six years there, Mendoza helped the program win five conference titles, five NCAA Tournament bids and a berth in the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2015. The Buffalo Grove, Ill. native was a three-year letter winner at Newman University and a one-year letter winner at Lewis University, and was a NAIA All-American as a setter.
 
AUBREY ACE-ZELL
Senior libero Aubrey Ezell has at least three aces in seven of the team’s first ten matches, and is now ranks fifth in the program’s all-time history. She currently ranks second nationally with 0.97 aces per set, and is the NCAA active career leader.
 
SHIELD BEARER
On Nov. 12 vs. Arkansas, junior Mikayla Shields broke 700 career kills, making her just the third sophomore in the program’s 45-year history to make it to 700 kills in their first two seasons. The others were all-time kills leader Lori Rowe (in 1984), and current associate head coach Shonda Cole (in 2004). Early on this season, Shields leads the offense again with 3.22 kills per set and a .313 hitting percentage and is nearing 900 career kills.
 
KEY PIECE RETURNS FOR CAROLINA 
After suffering an injury in the preseason, Alicia Starr missed the first four matches of the season. The junior saw her first extended action against Charlotte on Sept. 4 and came through with 10 kills and seven digs for the Gamecocks. Starr has been a key member since day one with the team, and will add key depth to the team’s attack.
 
MCLEAN BRINGS POSTSEASON EXPERIENCE TO SC
Britt McLean transferred to South Carolina after two seasons at Minnesota. She comes to the team after ending the 2017 on a high note with the Gophers, playing every set of their three NCAA tournament matches. In the opening round against North Dakota, McLean led the team with 13 kills and a .355 attack percentage in a sweep. In her two seasons at Minnesota, McLean played in nine matches. Through the team’s first 10 matches, she ranks second on the team with 2.83 kills per set.
 
IRON WOMAN 
Aubrey Ezell is on an impressive streak for the Gamecocks. The senior has not missed a single set in her career, entering the weekend on a stretch of 101 matches played. Currently, her 372 total sets played put her five away from entering the program’s top-10 in the rally-scoring era, but no other player have played as many consecutively. 
 
PHEISTER ROUNDS OUT GAMECOCK STAFF
Joining first-year head coach Tom Mendoza and fourth-year assistant coach Shonda Cole on the bench this fall will be Ethan Pheister, who spent the last three seasons as an assistant at LSU, working with the setters and helping coordinate the offense.
 
“Ethan is the right coach to round out our staff, and contributes to the culture we are working to build in our program. He is an elite trainer and is one of the top minds in our game from a scouting and analysis perspective. More importantly, he identifies well with the student-athletes, and has a teach-first mentality to their development both on and off the court,” Mendoza said.
 
LSU turned itself around in 2017, going from nine wins in the previous season to 20 wins and an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. Pheister had prior experience coaching in the SEC in 2012, helping Arkansas make the national tournament.
 
EZELL JOINS AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB
Aubrey Ezell passed 150 career aces during the team’s weekend at the Rice Invitational, making her just the second player in the program’s 45-year history to reach 2,000 assists, 1,000 digs and 150 aces in a career. Jodi Thompson (1991-94) is the only other Gamecock to claim all three milestones.
 
HOME-COURT ADVANTAGE
The Gamecocks have made the Carolina Volleyball Center one of the toughest venues in the country over the last three seasons. Of the program’s top ten crowds all time in the CVC, nine have come in the last three years and three of the top five have come this season, including a program-record crowd of 3,458 at the Clemson match on Aug. 25. That beat the record set less than 24 hours earlier, when 2,579 watched the team take down ETSU. After three weeks this season, the Gamecocks rank 12th nationally for cumulative attendance and 13th in average attendance.
            
DOUBLE-DOUBLE THE TROUBLE
After going for 12 kills and 13 digs against Maryland (9/8), Mikayla Shields moved past Shani Abshier (1994-97) and up to 18th in program history for career double-doubles. Teammate Aubrey Ezell ranks 15th on the career list with 22 – only six Gamecocks total have gone over 20 career double-doubles in the last 15 years.
 
ALL-TIME RECORDS

• South Carolina holds an 806-631 (.560) all-time record, dating back to 1973. The team’s 800th win of all time came on Aug. 25, 2018 against Clemson.
• The Gamecocks joined the SEC for volleyball in 1991, and have an all-time conference record of 185-263 (.415).
• In matches in the Carolina Volleyball Center, Carolina 194-111 (.635) overall and 95-94 (.503) in SEC matches.
• Tom Mendoza became the program’s 13th head coach on Jan. 3, 2018. This is his third season overall as a head coach, with a career record of 56-19.