WHITTIER, Calif. - At the midway point of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) schedule for the No. 2 Cal Lutheran volleyball team, the Regals remained undefeated with a 3-0 (25-20, 25-16, 25-15) sweep of Whittier tonight on the road to improve to 8-0 in league action.
WC came out fired up in the first game, opening a 2-0 lead before pushing the advantage to 10-2. The Regals remained calm and chipped away with five serves from Jena Chavez to get CLU within four at 11-7. Trailing 14-11 Kennedy Peters took the ball to the service line where she used a service ace, some Whittier errors and a pair of kills from Sarah Pappas to turn the deficit into an 18-14 lead. A Poets block got the home team fired up, but a kill from Pua Mo'okini-Oliveira followed by one from Hannah Orlandi and a block from Orlandi and Dianna Rohrer brought the game to a close with the Regals coming back for the win.
The second set saw Whittier again jump out to an early lead at 7-3, but one more time CLU remained composed and after exchanging points Nicki Tetherow used her strong serve to reel off five unanswered points to shift the momentum back in favor of the Regals. Leading 18-14 Allie Eason put down three consecutive kills, adding another to push Cal Lutheran's total to 23. Pappas came up big on back-to-back plays with a kill and a joint block with Mo'okini-Oliveira to finish the set exactly the same way as the first one ended.
To wrap up the match, CLU and WC were close until a 5-1 run gave the Violet and Gold a 7-3 lead that would just continue to grow. After notching a kill to push the score to 15-8, Eason served for six straight points, which included a pair of aces, to get the lead up to 21-8. Eleven plays later Eason put the game and match in the books with her contest-leading 11th kill of the night.
Behind Eason were Michelle Lawrence and Pappas with eight and seven kills, respectively. Rohrer had another solid night as well with five kills and no errors. Chavez finished with 18 assists while Peters tallied 14. Eason and Tetherow had two aces apiece with Chavez and Peters each recording one as well.
Defensively, CLU combined for 10 block assists, paced by Pappas with three. Eason led the team with nine digs and Lawrence came up with eight.
Whittier (5-9, 4-4 SCIAC) looked to Rebecca Slattery for 10 kills and Torrey Mitsunaga for 15 assists. Three different players had four digs for WC and Slattery and Haley Whyte had four block assists apiece.
CLU has won 35 straight SCIAC matches dating back to 2012.
Cal Lutheran (19-1, 8-0) is off for 10 days before opening the second round of league play at Pomona-Pitzer on Friday, Oct. 17 for a 7:30 p.m. first serve.
Box Score: CLU 3, WC 0
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