STARKVILLE — Mississippi State volleyball, trailing 2-1 in Wednesday’s match against Ole Miss, had itself a 20-19 lead in the fourth set, looking to send the match to a fifth set.
Rebels outside hitter Sasha Ratliff tried to tie the set at 20-20 with a big kill attempt, but without realizing it, MSU setter Gabby Coulter entered the mix in a very unique way.
A la internet sensation Scott Sterling, the kill attempt hit Coulter in the side of the face, but the rebound of the ball went over the net and landed cleanly on Ole Miss’s side, the point going to the Bulldogs.
The crowd went wild as Mississippi State State took a 21-19 lead in the set, but that wild point wasn’t enough to take the Rebels out of sync as they took the fourth set, 25-23, to win the match, 3-1.
“My head feels good now, but I got rocked,” Coulter said jokingly. “I’m doing OK.”
The fourth set was one that was very much in the hands of the Bulldogs (11-9, 4-6 Southeastern Conference) at that point, and like the first set, MSU kept it close and showed flashes of success offensively.
However, those were only temporary flashes because the sustained success that State has shown this season wasn’t fully on display on Wednesday.
Ole Miss (10-10, 6-4 SEC) took advantage of that in the second and third sets, recording a .500 hitting percentage and .563 kill percentage in Set 2 and a .231 hitting percentage and .385 kill percentage in Set 3.
“We just are trying to find consistency and we’re not doing the same thing over and over for long enough periods of time,” head coach Julie Darty Dennis said. “If you can’t sustain a game plan and execute, it’s not going to be very fun. It’s not going to be in our favor.”
The match got off to just about as good of a start as one can ask for, with the Bulldogs taking Set 1, 26-24, capped off by an emphatic set-winning kill from Sania Petties.
Petties finished with 10 kills in the match, one of three Mississippi State players with double-digit kills overall, and it was her first match with 10 or more kills since Sept. 8 against Kennesaw State.
Gabby Waden led MSU in kills on the night with 14, with Shania Cromartie following right behind at 13.
However, the two had 13 combined attack errors on the night as State combined to have 21 total attack errors in the match.
“We just need to be the same team every single day,” Darty Dennis said. “I don’t want to be a super-aggressive serving team one day, not be able to serve the next day. We just have to figure out who we want to be and what our brand of volleyball is.”
The errors game is an area that needs addressing as State’s SEC schedule rolls on because no match is an easy match.
That includes MSU’s next two matches over the weekend in Baton Rouge as the Bulldogs take on a 12-8 LSU team that has won its last two matches consecutively.
“I think just making less errors on our part, whether that’s serving, hitting, being in the right spot at the right time,” Coulter said. “If we focus on the little things it will help us out.”
The Bulldogs and Tigers will begin the first of two weekend matches at 6 p.m. Saturday.
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