ST. CHARLES, Mo. - The Lindenwood Men's Volleyball team (8-1, 2-0 MIVA) defeated #11 Lewis on Friday night in three sets by scores of 25-18, 25-18, and 25-14. The Lions hit .565 as a team and were led by
Luke Kraft's match-high 12 kills followed by
Brendan Louthain who added 11 in the sweep over the Flyers. Lindenwood also added a season-high 14 service aces with
Owen Walsh and Kraft each recording five for the match.
The Lions started the first set by going up 4-0 behind a pair of
Zach Solomon service aces and kills from
Caden Whiteside and
Luke Kraft to set the tempo early on.
Amir Grant extended the Lions lead to 10-5 later in the set, but Lewis responded with a 5-2 run of their own to cut down the Lindenwood lead to 11-10.
Owen Walsh and
Brendan Louthain stopped the Flyer run with back-to-back kills to regain control of the set at 13-10 and the duo eventually pushed the lead out to four at 15-11 as Louthain added another kill and Walsh picked up a service ace. Lewis got the deficit to one once again at 15-14, but the Lions went on another run to distance themselves and took the opening set 25-18. Louthain had seven kills in the opening set victory while
Amir Grant added three kills as LU hit .667 in the opening set.
In the middle set, Lindenwood trailed early on but eventually took the lead by a score of 11-7 thanks to two kills from Caden Whitesdie and one kill from
Luke Kraft. Kraft added two big kills later in the set to put the Lions up 20-16 before
Zach Solomon added two service aces to take the second set 25-18. In the third and final set, the Lions hit an incredible .875 en route to a 25-14 third set win. Lindenwood had six service aces in the set with three straight coming from
Owen Walsh early in the set to force a Lewis timeout with the score being 9-2. LU used six straight kills and one service ace to close out the third set in dominating fashion to improve to 2-0 in the MIVA and 8-1 overall on the season.
Lindenwood will return to action on Thursday night as they will travel to Purdue Fort Wayne for their next match. First serve from Fort Wayne, IN is scheduled for 6 p.m. CT.
