ST. CHARLES, MO. - The Lindenwood women's volleyball team defeated the USI Screaming Eagles in five sets to record their first OVC win in school history on Saturday afternoon in Indiana. 

"I give our players credit, they knew we needed to make changes after last night and they made them," said Head Coach Will Condon. "We made a much better effort on defense throughout the match.  We made better decisions in tough situations and overall we were just more aggressive."

The Lions avenged yesterday's loss right out of the gate, winning the first set 26-24 in a thrilling overtime victory. USI answered back by winning the second set 21-25, tying things up with Lindenwood at 1-1. The third set went to the Lions in a big 25-20 win, swinging the momentum right back in their favor, but USI edged them out in the fourth set, beating the Lions 22-25 to take things to a fifth set. Lindenwood answered back with a huge 15-6 win in the fifth set, putting the pressure on offensively and playing clean defense to see the match through. 

Mackenzi Sifuentes had a stellar day, leading the way with a team-leading 14 kills and .481 hitting percentage, while Madilyn Dement was right behind her with 13 kills, Nyah Wilson with 12, and Taylor Gentemann rounding out the Lions' leaderboard with 11 total kills. Abby VanBuskirk kept the strong Lindenwood offense moving with an impressive 44 set assists and the second best hitting percentage of the day at .222. 

Dement and Rebecca Janke were the Lions' best blockers today, each tallying four total blocks to lead the way. Jessie Seidel had an impressive match as well, recording a season-high 29 digs, rounding out her weekend with 39 total digs between her two matches against the Screaming Eagles. Wilson and VanBuskirk were right there to help her out, however, tallying 20 and 19 digs respectively.

"We can see the light at the end of the tunnel for what seems like this never ending road trip," said Condon. "I think the lesson that we learned today was that we have the power to control our outcomes and more importantly our perspective on those outcomes."

Up next, the Lions will head to SIUE on Tuesday afternoon for a mid-week OVC matchup with the Cougars that will start at 6:00 PM.