ROMEOVILLE, Ill. - No. 18 Lewis hit .286 to just .133 by Truman on Friday night inside Neil Carey Arena as the Bulldogs fell to the East's top team in the Flyers in straight sets with scores of 25-22, 25-13 and 25-22.
Truman's four-match winning streak was snapped as its record now sits at 12-15 overall and 9-5 in the GLVC. Meanwhile, Lewis has rattled off four-straight victories to improve to 20-6 on the season and 13-1 in league play. In the Bulldogs' seventh game against a ranked opponent for 2016, they were led by
Bailey O'Drobinak (pictured/10 kills),
Savvy Hughes (29 assists),
Natalie Brimeyer (two blocks), and
Lauren Wacker (20 digs).
In one of her best matches of the year, O'Drobinak had those 10 kills to just one error on 23 total attacks for a red-hot hitting percentage of .391. That's the senior's second-highest clip of the year when having at least 10 kills behind only the performance against Northern State on Sept. 3 (14 kills, .478). The Purple and White's 34 kills were spread amongst six players including O'Drobinak (10),
Jasmine Brown (9),
Kayla Bastian (8),
Lacey Hill (5), Hughes (1), and Brimeyer (1). Bastian was also able to dig out 10 balls to go with those eight kills.
In the first set, the home team was up by five, 9-4, early, before its visitors began to collect some momentum. After some more play, Truman was able to rally back and tie the score up four more of the six times (17-17, 20-20, 21-21, and 22-22). However, Lewis tallied the final three points to take the set and a 1-0 match lead.
In the second, the Bulldogs had a lead of 3-1 and it was tied 4-4, before the Flyers completely took over. From that point until the end of the set, Truman was able to score more than one point in a row just once and Lewis led by as many as 12 as it was in the final score (25-13).
For the third set, it was by far the tightest one of the night as it saw a combined 11 ties and six lead changes. Through the first 18 points of play, neither team led by more than two until that 19th point when the hosts scored and were up 11-8. That forced head coach
Ben Briney to use a timeout and the Bulldogs continued to hang around. Lewis built a five-point advantage, 16-11, before Truman registered eight of the next 10 points to regain the lead, 19-18. After three more deadlocks, the final being 21-21, the Flyers were responsible for four of the final five scores to take the set and the match, 3-0.
Next up, the Bulldogs are at Wisconsin-Parkside on Saturday with first serve set for 3 p.m. against the Rangers.