LC Men's Volleyball:  Lynx Pull Out Five-Set Win at Greenville

[January 31, 2019] 

The Lincoln College Men’s Volleyball team made the trip to Greenville University on Tuesday evening and returned home with a hard-fought five-set victory to improve to 2-0 on the young season.

Lincoln came out firing on all cylinders in set one to win it 25-20. However, serving errors plagued LC throughout the second set and caused them to struggle their way to a 22-25 loss that evened the match at one set for each team. Set three was closely contested up to a 14-14 score, but a 5-1 run of points from Greenville aided by four Lincoln hitting errors put the Lynx behind for good. LC would make a late run to narrow the gap, but eventually fell 23-25.

In set four, LC needed a win to force a fifth and deciding set, but did not get off to a strong start and fell behind 11-5. At that point, sophomore left side hitter Ramon Matos (Chicago) came through with a kill that sent senior Michael Wesley (North Chicago) behind the service line. Wesley would serve three points in a row to reduce GU’s lead to two at 11-9. After trading side outs, freshman setter Nick Washington (St. Louis, MO) served up a five-point run for Lincoln that featured two stuff blocks for points from the LC front row. The Lynx would lead the rest of the way to earn the set four win 25-21.

Lincoln carried the momentum gained from winning set four into the deciding set to 15 and jumped out to an 8-4 advantage. The Lynx earned their first match-point opportunity when they went up 14-10 on another Matos kill. Greenville regrouped and made things interesting by putting together a three-point run to reduce Lincoln’s lead to 14-13, but one more kill by Matos off a Nick Washington set assist ended the threat and gave the Lynx a 15-13 win to end the match.

Ramon Matos led Lincoln with 22 kills and four blocks in the match. Right side hitter Charles Carter (Blue Island) amassed 16 kills, and senior middle hitter Deantrius Coleman (North Chicago) also reached double-digits in kills with 10. Junior libero Trenton Keilion led the defensive effort for LC with a team-high 14 digs. Senior setter Bryan Orellana (Chicago) found LC hitters 34 times for set assists and Nick Washington picked up another 22 assists as well.

“We showed a great deal of mental toughness tonight to earn this victory,” said Lincoln Head Coach Mark Tippett. “It is frustrating when we beat ourselves with service and hitting errors, but we did a nice job of sticking together and working hard to clean up our play and get ourselves back in the match.”

Lincoln will next compete on February 1st and 2nd at the Judson University Invite in Elgin, IL. LC will play four matches at the two-day event.

[Mark Tippett
Lincoln College
Sports Information]