#12 D-2 LLCC defeats D-1 Lake Land 25-17, 21-25, 25-18, 25-15
LLCC defeats St. Louis 25-18, 16-25, 25-20, 28-26
 
GAME ONE:
LLCC defeated D-1 Lake Land in four sets Friday to open the 2019 Logger Invitational.  LLCC started well behind consecutive kills by freshmen Maggie Plush and Kennedy Bauer, opening a 9-4 lead.  At 15-10, the margin closed after four straight Logger errors, but a kill by sophomore Ashley Melton and two by Annika Black righted the ship and LLCC won going away 25-17.  In the second set, the mistake bugaboo struck as Lake Land took advantage of Logger miscommunication to open a 6-1 lead.  Lincoln Land tied it at 15, but followed that with another run of unforced errors which gave the Lakers a four point lead they didn't relinquish.  "We can't have unforced errors in bunches.  They were mental and those are bad," Coach Dietz said shortly after the match.  "It's what doomed us at Parkland and what we tried to emphasize yesterday in practice.  Game two sure didn't look like what we want."
 
That changed with the third set when Mary Hill rattled off four of her nine aces as LLCC opened a 6-0 lead.  When she rotated to serve again, she picked up three more, the aces providing the seven point cushion the Loggers eventually won by.  The fourth set saw LLCC steadily open a lead as Hill and sophomore Taylor Thomas aggressively served and opened a 17-9 lead, helped by kills from sophomore Bri Gomez and back-row attacks by Kennedy Bauer.  The Loggers won 25-15 to seal the match.
 
NOTE: Mary Hill's 9 aces are the second highest single-match total, behind Kate Ehrlich's 11 aces vs. Southwestern Iowa in 2007

GAME ONE STATS:
NOTE: Mary Hill fell one ace short of the most difficult triple-double possible; her 9 aces is the second highest ever in a single match—Kate Ehrlich had 11 vs. Southwestern Iowa in 2007.

Digs: Hill 19, Bates 11, Volk 9
Aces: Hill 9, Thomas 5
Blocks: Melton 6, Volk 2, Black 2
Assists: Volk 19, Pealer 19
Kills: Hill 11, Bauer 9, Plush 8

GAME TWO:
LLCC defeated a feisty St. Louis Comm. College squad in four sets in the nightcap of the LLCC Invitational.  St. Louis proved a tough opponent, fighting the Loggers dead even in all four sets to at least the nine-point mark.  In the first set, the Loggers proved victorious when St. Louis made four errors consecutively to end the set.  Unfortunately, LLCC returned the favor in the second set with two runs of unforced errors which opened a huge deficit and saw the Loggers lose 25-16.  In the third set, LLCC wasn't able to open more than a 2-point lead until a kill by freshman Kennedy Bauer made it 19-17.  In the final set, LLCC had several miscues initially and didn't find a rhythm until it was 22-24, holding off two set points before winning 28-26 to end the match.
 
"Definitely the best St. Louis team I've seen in fourteen years here," Coach Dietz said after the match.  "I made sure to tell them, too.  Scrappy, quick.  It was fun to play a team like that but now we have to turn around and play two more matches tomorrow, so we can't afford a letdown."
 
 GAME TWO STATS:
Vs. STLCC
Digs: Bates 22, Pealer 12, Bauer 12
Aces: Hill 2, Thomas 2
Blocks: Plush 8, Eaker 7
Assists: Pealer 24, Volk 21
Kills: Hill 14, Bauer 14
 
 Record: 5-2
NEXT: East Central College, 11am SAT