Photo by Byron Harward
Entering Friday afternoon having won four straight matches, the UVU volleyball team had its winning streak broken as the Wolverines fell to the Lehigh Mountain Hawks of the Patriot League in the opening match of the TCU Fight in the Fort Tournament. Lehigh (5-3) overpowered UVU (5-5), winning in three sets (20-25, 17-25, 19-25).
After falling into an early 2-0 hole, UVU was able to tie the score on a Mountain Hawk error and on the next play take the lead when a Brighton Taylor kill gave the Wolverines an 8-7 lead. The UVU lead grew to as many as five at 14-9 before Lehigh was able to respond. Fueled by a 6-1 run the Mountain Hawks quickly closed the gap and tied the score at 15 a piece. The Wolverines seemed to run out of gas at that point as conceded the first set.
The Mountain Hawks were able to harness the momentum of a first set win and carry it into the second as they quickly jumped out to a 9-3 lead. The Wolverines were able to momentarily slow the onslaught of Lehigh, cutting the deficit to four when Kristen Allred scored a kill that made the score 9-5. The comeback would be short lived however as the Wolverines fell behind by as many as eight as they fell in the second set.
After falling behind yet again in the third set, the Wolverines began to strike back. After a couple of Lehigh errors cut their lead to three at 10-7, UVU looked to be staging a resurgence. That was as close as the Wolverines would get though as they were unable to avoid the sweep, losing the third and final set unceremoniously.
“We were not very good today. We’ve got to give credit to Lehigh, they played much better than we did and we just didn’t respond,” head UVU coach Sam Atoa said in a statement to GoUVU.com.
Alexis Davies led the charge for UVU in this one, recording eight kills and Lexi Thompson added another six.
Next up for UVU, the Wolverines will look to rebound when they take on Duke and host school TCU tomorrow in Fort Worth, Tex.
Following the Fight in the Fort Tournament, UVU will return to the state of Utah to take on Weber State in Ogden on Sept. 13 before welcoming No. 18 Utah and No. 10 BYU to the Lockhart Arena on Sept. 15 and 16, respectively.
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