Pride drop road match in five sets to Morningside

SIOUX CITY, Iowa - The second end of their back-to-back road matches finished in a loss as the Clarke University men's volleyball team dropped their match at Morningside University by a final score of 3-2.

CU earned their first opening set win of the season but dropped sets two, four, and five to fall by set scores of 19-25. 25-22, 22-25, 25-23, and 15-9 in favor of the Mustangs.

As a team, the Pride performed well on the attack, finishing with a .224 hitting percentage with no set finishing under .160 but Morningside closed out the match with strong offensive performances in the fourth and fifth, hitting .306 and .600 which was a higher percentage than any CU set.

Isaiah Barnes of the Mustangs led all players with 27 kills and was relatively efficient on a match-high 61 attacks with only 10 errors to finish at a .279 hitting percentage.

Clarke's depth tried to pull out the win in the match as Michael Jenkins (15), Montez Thompson (13), and Tye Ojala (10) all finished over .160 on their hitting percentage and had double digit kills. Stephen Lewandowski and Zachary Barr combined for 11 kills on 23 attempts with only five errors.

Clarke men's volleyball will return home for all of their matches next week as they will play in five matches on the week starting on Tuesday when they host NAIA No. 1 ranked Grand View University at 7:00 p.m. CT.