Wittenberg Squeaks Past Mount St. Joseph

CINCINNATI, Ohio - The Wittenberg Tigers may not be queens of the North Coast Athletic Conference mountain at this point in the 2005 regular season, but they took a significant step toward securing a position as queen of the Great Lakes Region mountain with a hard-fought 3-2 win at Mount St. Joseph on Friday.

The Tigers, ranked sixth in the nation with a 23-4 overall record, got the best of the Lions, who fell to 20-7, by game scores of 30-26, 30-20, 23-30, 30-32 and 15-12. Wittenberg came into the match ranked second in the region after finishing first each of the last three seasons, and Mount St. Joseph, the top team in the region the two years before that, currently stands third. Both are chasing current Ohio Athletic Conference leader Capital, which had just one loss in the region before a tough week that included losses to Baldwin-Wallace and Otterbein.

What started out as a lop-sided Tiger win, in the mold of a 3-0 victory Wittenberg recorded last month at the Washington University National Invitational, turned into the kind of dogfight one would expect between two teams ranked in the top 15 nationally. After taking the first two games by fairly comfortable margins, Mount St. Joseph gained momentum with a convincing third-game win and then pulled out a dramatic Game 4. But Wittenberg's young team may have crossed an important psychological barrier in Game 5, pulling out a taut 15-12 win.

Five Wittenberg players recorded at least 10 kills as the Tigers continued to do a tremendous job spreading the ball around. The team leader was freshman Jackie Williams, who pounded an extremely efficient 17 kills against just three errors in 33 attempts, good for a .424 attack percentage. Right behind Williams was sophomore Emily Bell, who led all players with 55 swings, 16 of which went for kills.

Also of note was the play of the sophomore setting tandem of Sarah Matesich and Ashley Anderson, who finished with 22 and 33 assists respectively. In addition, freshman libero Laura Fender posted 22 digs to lead three players in double figures in that category, senior middle hitter Emily Dixon topped all players with six blocks, including two solos, and Bell was key with five service aces.