THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. - In an identical setting to last week, the Cal Lutheran women's volleyball team bounced back from a tough five set defeat on the road with a home victory inside Gilbert Arena. This time, the Regals defeated Occidental 3-1 (25-12, 25-16, 16-25, 25-10) on Saturday night.
The Tigers came out of the gate quickly to take a 4-0 lead before back-to-back kills by Michelle Lawrence and Allie Eason put CLU on the board.
With Jamie Smith at the service line, the Regals put together six straight points, capitalizing on a handful of Oxy attacking errors, to take a 10-6 lead. From there, the Violet and Gold extended their lead after a 10-3 run that featured a service ace from Nicki Tetherow and a pair of kills from Sarah Pappas. Monica Lundgren slammed home one of her many booming kills on the night to capture the first set for CLU, 25-12.
The Regals carried their momentum into the second set, jumping out to a 4-0 lead behind kills from Pappas and Amanda Roberts. Hope Stewart had an exceptional performance in the second set with five of her six kills in the game and propelled CLU to a 25-16 win.
Occidental would not lay down in the third set and built a substantial lead that was too much to overcome for Cal Lutheran. During the set, CLU had a negative hitting percentage as a team and totaled just eight kills whereas the Tigers hit .237 and had 13 kills.
After being pushed to a fourth set for just the second time at home all season, the Regals came at the Tigers with full force and ran away with the game, 25-10, and the match. Pappas was instrumental in the early goings of the set with three big kills, and Lundgren added three critical kills to give the Violet and Gold the energy they needed to close out the game.
Pappas led all players in the game with 14 kills on an outstanding .542 hitting percentage while the trio of Eason, Lundgren and Lawrence added seven kills apiece. Tetherow was all over the court and tallied 23 digs while Smith dished out 33 assists.
For the Tigers, Amanda Herold led the way with seven kills and 15 digs and Cassandra Guidice finished with six kills.
Cal Lutheran (21-4, 11-2 SCIAC) heads out on the road this Tuesday, Oct. 27 for a 7:30 p.m. match against Chapman.
Box Score: CLU 3, OXY 1
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