After holding a four match winning streak coming into tonight’s contest against Tennessee Tech (5-15, 1-9 OVC), the Belmont Bruins (13-12, 6-3 OVC) now have a season best five match streak after scraping by the Golden Eagles in four sets Friday night.
“I don’t want to say that we took them for granted, but it didn’t take much relaxing for that to happen and maybe we remembered a little too much of winning at their place easily and weren’t prepared for the battle that tonight turned into,” coach Deane Webb said.
TTU has now lost six consecutive matches.
Senior libero Jamie Lundstrom led the Bruins in digs (17) and Jocelyn Youngdahl led in kills (12).
“Joce scored at a high rate, hit over.300 she plays hard when she’s out there, just a kid who finds a way and always has,” Webb said.
Setter Hannah Miranda, who was recently named OVC Setter of the Week finished the night with 34 assists.
Although the beginning of the first set was relatively close, Belmont completed a 5-0 run to go up 13-5 and continued to dominate the remainder of the set 25-13.
As with set one, Belmont jumped to an early 11-3 lead in set two. But, the Golden Eagles completed a six point run to cut Belmont’s lead 17-15.
The Golden Eagles continued to play with enthusiasm, taking their first lead of the night, 8-7 in the third set, jumping to a 16-11 lead toward the set’s midpoint.
Rallying behind a TTU service error, Belmont cut the Golden Eagle lead to one, and a Jen Myer kill would tie the set at 24.
A Belmont defensive error and ensuing TTU point gave the Golden Eagles the set 26-24.
“I think we made some very poor attacking decisions early, and maybe got a little more frustrated by that than we should, and then servicing seemed to come down,” Webb said.
“I can’t remember we got aced ten times in a match, it was that lack of focus that seemed to spread throughout our team. I think that’s unfortunate but it’s something we will learn from.”
The Bruins opened the fourth set with consecutive service errors, allowing Tech to gain an early 5-2 lead and fought to stay within striking range until the midpoint of the set where a Jocelyn Youngdahl kill gave Belmont a 15-14 lead that they would continue to build upon to take set four.
The Bruins will complete a four game home stretch tomorrow against Jacksonville State at 2:00 p.m.