HARROGATE, Tenn. — The Railsplitters ended its two-game homestand before a trip to Hawaii the right way, sweeping Coker Friday night and then taking care of business versus Erskine Saturday.
It was the Lincoln Memorial University men's volleyball team's second match against the Fleet and its first victory — this one being 3-1, 25-18, 22-25, 25-23, 25-23
For the second straight day, the Railsplitters (7-4) led their opponent in hitting percentage behind a .303 effort while Erskine (4-8) hit just .239.
Like most matches,
Evan Cory led his squad, smacking down a match-high 21 kills and 24.5 points, while
Danny Hermida and
Dawson Walker had 12 and 10 kills, respectively. LMU was feeling it from a serving standpoint Saturday, securing 10 service aces compared to the Fleet's three.
Pedro Carvalho had four, Cory had three, Walker had two and Hermida added one more.
The junior Carvalho also paced the teams in blocks with six while Walker and Hermida had two each.
AJ Risavy had a team-high 46 assists and eight digs, and then Hermida and
Andres Delgado added six more digs apiece.
The Fleet were led by Griffin Spence's 17 kills and 17.5 points. Meanwhile, Francisco Pomar had 43 assists and Hector Collazo (13), Lancy Aldebol (7) and Spence (5) paced Erskine in digs.
In the opening set, the Fleet took the quick lead but the Railsplitters responded promptly. Walker capped a 3-0 run to knot the match at 11-all and force a visitor timeout. The two teams swapped two points back-and-forth, which led to an Erskine three-nil spurt to warrant am LMU timeout. Out of the brief break, the Railsplitters who hit a blistering .556 percent, turned it up a notch, scoring the next 10 of 12 points to take set one and the match 1-0 lead.
Erskine took the hot hand in the second set, hitting .458 compared to the Railsplitters' .233. The 25-22 final score explains how this set was very close until the end. The Fleet didn't allow LMU to score more than two points at a time while they rattled off three-point spurts twice to take the lead (13-12, 17-15) and eventual secure the set.
The final two sets, which LMU won 25-23 in both, were full of wire-to-wire competitive men's volleyball, where the Railsplitters were able to grind out just a few points per set to come out on top. The win in each was capped off via the hands of the freshman Walker to secure LMU's back-to-back homestand victories.
