LONGVIEW, Texas - On a night that saw both teams honor breast cancer patients as part of breast cancer awareness month, the LeTourneau University volleyball team would see their 2017 home finale spoiled by an upstart East Texas Baptist University in a 3-0 loss at Solheim Arena in Longview, Texas on Tuesday, October 17th.
LETU slips to 7-18 overall and 2-11 in the American Southwest Conference with the loss while the visiting Tigers improved to 10-16 and 6-7 in the ASC.
The first set would be one to forget for the YellowJackets as it would be all ETBU from the start. Seven of the first eight points would break in favor of the Tigers as LeTourneau could not get anything going offensively in the set. Things would get even worse, with East Texas Baptist pushing their lead out to as large as 21-4 before three straight points by the YellowJackets brought the lead down to 21-7. The set would end up 25-9 in favor of ETBU as the Tigers would hit .500 in the set while committing just two attack errors.
In the second set, LETU would do a better job of keeping with ETBU early on, trailing by scores of 8-5 and and 10-6 before scoring three straight points to pull within one at 10-9. The Tigers pushed their lead back to 15-10 with and extended it to 18-12 before eventually pulling away for a 25-19 set victory.
East Texas Baptist would continue their hot hitting in the third set by again scoring the first three points of the set and jumping out to a 7-2 lead forcing a LeTourneau timeout. The closest that the YellowJackets would get the rest of the way would come at scores of 17-13 and again at 18-14 before another 3-0 run by ETBU gave the Tigers a 21-14 lead. LETU would manage to fend off two straight match points to pull within 24-18 before a kill by Bailey Byas ended the match with a third set score of 25-18 going in favor of East Texas Baptist.
LeTourneau hit .147 for the match after managing just six kills in the first set while hitting .033. The Tigers managed to hit .303 in the match record seven service aces compared to only two for LETU.
Freshman
Hailey Matthews led the YellowJackets with seven kills while
Korissa White and
Cam Taylor had 13 assists apiece.
Liz Williams would add nine digs while
Torie Langston and
Lauren Egby-McNeal each recorded two blocks.
The final seven matches for the YellowJackets will come on the road with three taking place this weekend. LeTourneau will take part in the Belhaven University triangular, taking on the Blazers at 3 p.m. on Friday, October 20th and Mississippi University for Women at 5 p.m.
