The No. 11 LSU Tigers (26-11) defeated the No. 6 TCU Horned Frogs (29-8) 3-2 in Gulf Shores and will play the No. 3 Stanford Cardinal in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship. (32-5) at noon on ESPN2.
In NCAA beach volleyball, five pairs of two compete on five courts, with the team winning three of the courts winning the dual.
To win these courts, pairs must win two sets, with the first set being first to 21 (or two if tied at 20), with a 15-set tiebreak possible.
LSU's 3-2 win (the closest possible in beach volleyball) had four third sets, with all of the Tigers' points coming in the third set.
In soccer terms, LSU came back in the fourth inning and won in 3OT. In baseball terms, the Tigers tied the score in the 9th inning and exploded in the 12th inning.
It was a true classic.
“Today was great,” head coach Russell Brock said in a press release. “It was clear that we needed to commit to playing well and playing a full game. Obviously we fell behind early, but that determination and commitment was even more evident. The momentum changed midway through, and I could feel the Tigers moving forward! I'm very proud of the way all of our pairs played. Not one pair played as well as we had trained. There wasn't.”
LSU lost the first and second sets on three of the five courts to make it a full game, but went 1-1 on courts 2-5 to steal the third set.
But the Tigers fell behind 1-0 as graduate transfer Gabi Bailey and senior Ellie Shank lost 17-21 and 18-21 to TCU's court, which had just three losses of the season.
LSU won 17-21, 21-17, 15-9 after the court four pairing of freshman Skylar Martin (the shortest player remaining in the tournament) and senior Amber Haynes We managed to draw with the Horned Frogs.
Less than a minute later, the second-court pairing of junior Parker Bracken and senior Riley Allred won 21-15, 16-21, 16-14 to give LSU a 2-1 lead.
The final two courts are LSU's two AVCA top flight teams that have played at least 15 games together and won 75% of them.
TCU defeated LSU's fifth top-flight pairing, freshman Jari Ashish and senior transfer Emily Meyer, 21-17, 16, -21, 11-15 to tie the score.
The battle came down to juniors Ella Larkin and Aubrey O'Gorman, another top-flight pair.
Larkin and O'Gorman split the first two competitive sets 20-22 and 23-21.
With the score tied at 2-2, LSU fans and players rushed to Court 3 to watch O'Gorman serve with a 14-12 lead, and quickly won 15-12 to seal the dual. I let it happen.
The win marked the third time in four years that LSU has defeated TCU and continued the Tigers' tradition of always winning at least one game in Gulf Shores.
The Tigers' next opponent will be Stanford University, a team they beat 5-0 at home earlier this year.
Stanford has only lost once, to a team other than the top two seeds, USC and UCLA. In fact, those three teams are 84-3 against all other teams. But one of his three losses was LSU's 3-2 win over his USC.
“Stanford is a solid team,” Bullock said in a press release. “They earned their seeding. We have no choice but to play the same battle we had today. We believe we can beat any team here, but that belief will not bring us victory. We must execute our game plan well and play with the energy and execution that befits a top team in the country. We are looking forward to a great challenge.”