BATON ROUGE - The LSU volleyball team embarks on its spring campaign with a quartet of matches Saturday at the 5th Annual Texas Tornados College Spring Tournament in Houston.

The defending SEC champions face off with Rice and TCU in the morning session before taking on New Mexico State and Texas during the afternoon. All matches are two out of three sets with the deciding set going to 15 points if necessary. 

"Our team has had a very productive start to the spring semester, and we're looking forward to having the chance to truly compete," head coach Fran Flory said. "This tournament is always very competitive so we realize we need to be prepared for the weekend." 

LSU put together an impressive 25-7 record in 2009 en route to the program's first SEC regular season title since 1991. Under Flory, the defending five-time SEC Western Division champions are one of only 20 programs in the nation to appear in the last five NCAA Tournaments.

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