LSU Star Plays With In-Your-Face Style : NCAA volleyball: The Tigers, ranked fifth, face No. 2 CS Long Beach. UCLA faces Ohio State.

The leanest, meanest Tiger of them all, Monique Adams, will lead Louisiana State against Cal State Long Beach in the NCAA women’s volleyball semifinals tonight at Pauley Pavilion.

Adams once drove a ball into the face of an opponent and snickered while her adversary lay writhing in pain.

“They were, like, (saying) I should pay the medical bills,” Adams told Volleyball Magazine. “I was, like, ‘Yeah, right.’ ”

Adams, a 6-foot-2 senior, loves to intimidate--and she is good at it. She had an NCAA-record 43 kills last week against Florida to send the Tigers into tonight’s match, which follows the 7 p.m. matchup between defending NCAA champion UCLA and Ohio State.

“She might be the strongest hitter in the country,” Long Beach Coach Brian Gimmillaro said.

Indeed, Adams is the driving force behind the No. 5-ranked Tigers (35-1) and their second-ranked offense.

But opposite Adams and company will be the No. 2-ranked 49ers (35-1), whose attack features the top offense in the country, led by a less dynamic but more versatile hitter, Antoinnette White.

White, a 5-9 senior, may be five inches shorter than Adams, but she is not easily intimidated.

White’s only concern seems to be whether she will be able to perform up to her standards. “There’s always that fear,” she said.

But White, more often than not, is not disappointed in herself.

She leads the team in kills with 522 and in service aces with 66. She blocks, digs and passes as well as any hitter.

Granted, the sophisticated 49er attack, run by setter Sabrina Hernandez, relies heavily on the net play of Danielle Scott, Alicia Mills and Christine Romero. But White’s consistency has earned her player-of-the-year honors.

And, as far as those who have faced the 49ers are concerned, she was the only candidate.

“Monique Adams will probably get 22 kills,” UC Santa Barbara Coach Kathy Gregory said, “but you look at the stats and you’ll see that White will pass 50% of the court, have 18 digs, blocks. And she has one of the best serves, from deep in the backcourt.”

White and the 49ers defeated the No. 10 Gauchos in all three meetings this season, most recently to advance to the Northwest regional final.

Once there, the 49ers got by No. 3 Hawaii in five games. White had a career-high 33 kills.

LSU also features hitters Nyla Shepherd and Luciana Reis.

UCLA took a different course to the semifinals, but the Bruins are back at Westwood to defend their national championship.

And suddenly, things are looking up for a 29-5 team that had to travel to Palo Alto and beat top-ranked Stanford to be able to come back to its home court as participants rather than spectators.

The Bruins have won eight matches in a row without dropping a single game. They made it look easy against a Stanford team that had won the first two meetings.

Ohio State has won 27 consecutive matches after starting 3-3.

Among the hitters for the Buckeyes is Julie Chellevold of Thousand Oaks. Chellevold leads the team in kills with 423.