The Lincoln University women's volleyball team won their first Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) match of the season Thursday night, defeating Bowie State University 3-1 at Manuel Rivero Hall.
The Lions took the opening set 25-19 while the Bulldogs held off a late Lincoln rally to win the second set 25-21. Lincoln proceeded to close out the match with 25-16 and 25-11 wins in the final two sets.  The Lions improve to 3-10 overall, 1-9 in CIAA action and 1-3 in CIAA north contests.  Bowie State falls to 1-16 overall and 0-10 and 0-4 in CIAA and divisional matches.
Senior Mariah Russell (St Louis Mo./Maplewood Richmond Heights) led the Lions with 12 kills, nine aces and eight digs. Her nine aces are a career-high and the most by a CIAA player in a single match this season and is also third highest total nationally for a four-set match this season).  Aubury Coleman (Mason City, Iowa/ Mason City) added ten kills while Alisa Foster (Philadelphia, Pa./Science Leadership Acad.) led the team with 25 assists.  Tymera Crudup (Barnegat, N.J./Barnegat) recorded 15 digs to lead all players.
Courtney Crawford had seven kills to pace the Bulldogs offense. Brianna Myers had 10 digs on the defensive end. Bianca tucker led the team with 11 assists.
Three kills from Coleman plus a pair of aces from Russell propelled the Lions to a 12-5 lead in the first set before the Bulldogs rallied with an 11-2 flourish to take a two point lead at 16-14, prompting a Lions timeout. Following the timeout, Lincoln regained serve via a serving error before running off six straight points with Russell serving to take a 21-16 lead. Two straight kills and an ace by the Bulldogs followed as they closed within three at 21-19.  Coleman then tossed down the last of her six kills in the set and Crudup closed it out with ace to give the Lions a 25-19 win.
Bowie State scored eight of the first ten points in the second set to open up an early 8-2 lead. The Bulldogs extended the margin to 14-5 and later 19-7 on a Bianca Tucker service ace before the Lions mounted a rally with a 10-1 run to close within three, 20-17. Two kills and three aces from Russell highlighted the run. Three straight errors by the Lions followed and they found themselves back down by six at 23-17. Lincoln would come no closer than three points the rest of the way as Bowie held off the charge and evened the match with a 25-21 win.
The Bulldogs jumped out to an early 4-1 lead in the third set before the Lions woke up and started to chip away. Kaylarose Scott (Orange, N.J./Hudson Catholic)'s kill gave Lincoln an 8-7 lead and started an 8-3 flourish to put the Lions up by five 15-10. After a series of attack and service errors from both squads, Rusell delivered two straight kills to push the Lincoln lead to six, 19-13 before closing out the set with a 6-3 run to earn the 25-16 win and take a 2-1 lead in the match.
The fourth and final set was all Lions as they opened up an early 5-2 lead on a pair of Russell aces and continued to expand the lead as the set wore on. Two aces from Foster put the Lions up 14-8. A block from Tierra Russaw (Westland, Mich./Summit Academy) pushed the lead to seven at 18-11 before Russaw served out the set and the match with seven straight points, three of them coming on aces.
The women's volleyball team returns to action on Monday, October 9, 2017 when they travel to Ettrick, Virginia to take on Virginia State University. Tipoff is at 6:00 p.m.
