Nov. 11, 2013
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Junior All-SEC middle blocker Whitney Little (Keller, Texas) earned SEC Defensive Player of the Week on Monday (Nov. 11) as announced by the league office. The weekly honor is the sixth SEC weekly honor for the Tigers this season and the first for Little this year. It is the third time that she has claimed SEC Defensive Player of the Week honors in her career. She averaged 2.43 blocks per set last week and tallied her sixth career 10-block match in a four-set win at Alabama Sunday.
"This is a great award for me personally, but I think it comes mostly because our team won two tough road matches last week," Little said. "I never could have done as well as I did on the block without preparing in practice every day. We played two of the best middles in the conference in back-to-back matches and (volunteer assistant coach) Matt Porter did such a good job of scouting and mimicking those players in practice that neither one threw anything at me that we weren't ready for. He deserves a lot credit as does the rest of our team."
Little was sensational on the weekend in a pair of road wins at Auburn and Alabama, both of which had won six of seven matches before playing the Tigers. On Friday against Auburn, Little had seven total blocks including two solo stuffs as she was the key reason why Mizzou was able to slow Preseason All-SEC middle blocker Camilla Jersonsky. In fact, three of Little's stuffs, including both of her solo blocks in the match came against Jersonsky, who was limited to just .160 hitting while hitting into five Tiger blocks.
Little was equally as impressive in Mizzou's four-set win at Alabama, slowing freshman phenom Krystal Rivers to her second-worst attack clip of the year at .178. Little tallied her sixth career 10-block match (a school record) in the win and four of the 10 blocks came against Rivers, including a pair of solo stuffs. Rivers came into the match averaging nearly 4.00 kills per set on .448 hitting as Little and the Tigers did a great job of slowing her down.
It was also a historic weekend for Little as she tallied her 39th solo block of the season, the second-most in program history, just one back of the single season record. She also became just the second Tiger to post more than 100 blocks in three consecutive seasons and the first to do so in the rally scoring era.
Little and the Tigers will head to No. 5 Florida and South Carolina this weekend. The match with the fifth-ranked Gators has huge SEC Title implications as win would give Mizzou an inside track at winning an outright SEC Championship. Mizzou is 13-0 in league play while Florida is 11-1 with its only loss coming at the hands of the Tigers in Columbia earlier this season. For all the latest on Mizzou volleyball, stay tuned to MUTigers.com and follow the team on Twitter @MizzouVB.