LONGVIEW, Texas - Playing host to the American Southwest Conference volleyball crossover tournament, the LeTourneau University volleyball team would find themselves on the wrong end of a 25-16, 25-19, 25-18 loss to McMurry before falling to the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor 25-10, 25-13, 25-15 at Solheim Arena in Longview, Texas on Friday, September 22nd.
With the games taking part of the Lace Up 4 Pediatric Cancer event that all 12 ASC schools are participating in this weekend, LETU falls to 4-10 overall and 0-4 in conference while McMurry improves to 9-3 and 2-1 in the ASC. The Crusaders picked up their 13th win of the year and are 13-1 overall and 5-1 in the ASC.
Offensive struggles would be apparent in the first match against McMurry as the War Hawks would hold a .361 - .116 advantage in attack percentage and fore 23 YellowJacket attack errors to only six of their own. A 5-1 advantage in blocks would add to the deficit for LeTourneau, which only saw a lead come in the second set while trailing through the entirety of the first and third sets.
Senior
Savanna Stutts led all players in the match with 12 kills followed by
Hailey Matthews with eight and
Lauren Egby-McNeal with seven.
Korissa White dished out a season-high 34 assists and added 10 digs.
A long layover from playing the 12:30 p.m. match and having to wait until 8 p.m. against Mary Hardin-Baylor did not play into the hands of the YellowJackets as LETU would hit -0.63 for the match while committing 26 total attack errors. UMHB managed to hit an efficient .283 and outblock LeTourneau 5-0 to overcome a 6-1 LETU advantage in service aces.
Torie Langston along with Matthews would each end up with five kills in the match while
Ashlyn Johnson had four. White managed to fill the stat sheet for a second consecutive game, finishing with 13 assists, eight digs, and three service aces.
LETU will look to salvage the weekend with a 10 a.m. match against Howard Payne University at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. HPU went 1-1 on Friday, losing in five sets to Texas-Tyler before bouncing back with a three-set win over Louisiana College.
