It’s hard to believe we’re down to just four home matches left this season! And two of them get played this weekend. On Halloween night, the Lady Vols will try to put a scare into the Georgia Bulldogs. Kids 12 and under in costume will be admitted free, and UT student-athletes will be signing autographs before the match. On Sunday, LSU comes to town.

• The bad news: no candy. The good news: Tennessee is 12-8-2 on Halloween! Things are a little more muddled when looking at the specifics of this year’s match. The Lady Vols are 3-3 at home and 1-1 vs Georgia in matches played on October 31st.

• With a win on Friday, Tennessee would have a 6 match winning streak, tying the fifth longest streak since Rob Patrick took over as coach in 1997. In late 2004, the Lady Vols won 14 in a row. In early and mid 2004, the team twice won 9 in a row. They matched that number again in 2005. In 2000, Tennessee won 6 in a row.

• With Florida’s recent loss to Georgia, the Bulldogs now have the longest current winning streak in the SEC at 6 matches. Tennessee and Kentucky are second with 5 wins in a row.

• Tennessee has won 10 of the last 11 matches against Georgia and hasn’t lost at home to them since 2001.

• If LSU wins their Friday match at Kentucky, they will be going for program win #800 vs Tennessee.

• Last season LSU senior libero Elena Martinez and Tennessee junior libero Chloe Goldman were easily the top two players at their position in the conference. And so they are again this season. Martinez is 50th in the nation with 4.56 digs per set, while Goldman is 52nd with 4.52. Just counting SEC matches Goldman gets the slight edge with 4.85 to 4.84. Both players reached 1,000 career digs this season. Combined, the two of them have won more than half of the SEC Defensive Player of the Week awards this season — Martinez three times, Goldman twice, other players four times. When they met earlier this season Martinez had 22 digs to Goldman’s 17. However, Goldman did better on serve receive with no errors compared to 3 for Martinez.

• LSU is ranked 44th in the country in blocks per set. The Lady Vols are right there with them ranking 48th. LSU’s top blocker is Brittnee Cooper, 22nd in the country with 1.30 blocks per set. Tennessee’s Alyssa Hilby is not far behind at 52nd with 1.21.

• Tennessee has lost 8 of the last 11 matches with LSU.

• Georgia (14-9, 7-5)
Tennessee leads the all time series 35-23
Tennessee won earlier this season 3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-19)
Game time is Fri, October 31st at 7:00pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video
UGA match notes

• LSU (12-7, 7-5)
Tennessee leads the all time series 16-29
Tennessee lost earlier this season 3-1 (22-25, 25-18, 25-20, 25-23)
Game time is Sun, November 2nd at 1:30pm ET
Follow the match with Gametracker or with live video

	UT	UGA	LSU
Matches / Sets	23 / 84	23 / 85	19 / 71
Kills Errors / Total Attacks Kills per set Hitting Percentage	1077 413 / 2869 12.8 .231	1067 431 / 2802 12.6 .227	922 415 / 2438 13.0 .208
Assists Assists per set	1002 11.9	977 11.5	849 12.0
Service Aces Aces per set	102 1.2	113 1.3	89 1.3
Digs Digs per set	1260 15.0	1133 13.3	964 13.6
Solo Blocks / Assists Blocks per set	36 / 335 2.4	19 / 320 2.1	43 / 263 2.5

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 4:16 pm.