STARKVILLE — It will be another second-division finish for Mississippi State this season, but that doesn’t mean the Bulldogs aren’t a dangerous team, and they earned their best win of the season in their final home match of the year Sunday.
MSU dropped the first set before taking the next three to earn a 19-25, 25-20, 25-22, 26-24 victory over No. 25 Missouri on Senior Day, sending its six fifth-year players out on a high note in their final match at Newell-Grissom Building.
“You can play into (the emotions) or play with it, and I felt like our team really played with it,” Bulldogs head coach Julie Darty Dennis said. “We knew Missouri was going to be super well-prepared, super dialed in. They’re an extremely tough team. Our team just wanted it for the seniors.”
The Tigers jumped out to a 6-1 lead in the first set, and MSU (11-13, 5-10 Southeastern Conference) never got closer than three points down. But the Bulldogs came out hot in the second set, never allowing Missouri (19-7, 10-4) to win more than two straight points as they went ahead 20-9. That allowed MSU to withstand a Tigers rally — Missouri won 11 of the next 15 points to make things close before the Bulldogs closed it out on an error.
The third set followed a similar script, with the Bulldogs taking a 9-2 lead and the Tigers tying it up at 12 with a 7-0 run. The teams went back and forth from there, but Karli Schmidt recorded three kills during a 4-0 MSU run that put the hosts in front for good.
“We channeled our emotions into excitement, and we just played with a lot of heart,” Schmidt said. “We played hard, and every time we play hard we’re never disappointed. We can be really happy with the result we put out today. It was such a good way to end our seniors’ careers here.”
The Bulldogs won seven straight points in the fourth set to go ahead 13-7, but Missouri clawed its way back and ultimately staved off a match point to extend the set to extra points. Sophomore Arissa Smith’s kill gave MSU a second match point, and the Bulldogs put it away this time when the Tigers’ Colleen Finney misfired.
Schmidt, Amina Shackelford and Kailin Newsome — all fifth-years — finished with 15, 13 and 12 kills, respectively. Setter Ceci Harness, another graduate student in her final year of eligibility, distributed the ball to the attackers and had 52 assists for her third match of the year with 50 or more.
“We spread the wealth here,” Harness said. “We don’t have one person who gets the majority of the goals. Everybody is getting tons of balls. I really do believe in spreading the offense out. Our defense was doing awesome at getting balls up to target, and that made my job a whole lot easier. And then our hitters obviously did great.”
Five Bulldogs had at least 10 digs, led by freshman libero McKenna Yates with 22. Another freshman, Mele Corral-Blagojevich, finished with 19.
MSU concludes the season Wednesday evening at Georgia.
“They stayed so composed,” Darty Dennis said. “They showed guts, they showed grit, they just persevered. It was beautiful. I’m just so excited that this is exactly how we get to leave the 2024 season here at Newell-Grissom. We’ve had ebbs and flows and ups and downs, but today was certainly a bright spot.”
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