St. Paul, MN - The Martin Luther College volleyball team played its second UMAC match of the season following an emotion filled opening win over Bethany on Tuesday evening. Friday night's contest featured a tough opponent against the No. 6 ranked, Northwestern Eagles, who just came off of a five set win over the No. 18 ranked Gusties of Gustavus. 

The Knights showed moments of a possible upset push and gave it their all in the Ericksen Center, but were swept 3-0 by Northwestern.

With the sweep, Northwestern continued their string of dominance and has now gone 51 consecutive sets without a loss in UMAC competition. The last set that the Eagles dropped came on October 30, 2021 to Bethany.

With that in mind, MLC gave a tremendous effort in the second set, after losing 25-16 in the first set. The Knights traded blows with Northwestern and were even at set point on three separate occasions. However, MLC was unable to put together that final point and the Eagles utilized their power to finish off the Knights with a 28-26 win.

Northwestern erased any momentum that MLC might have had in the second set and went on to a convincing third set victory (25-9).

Although the Knights lost, they have nothing to be discouraged about as they took a nationally ranked D-III opponent to the brink in a set and showed that they are improving in each match played.

Naomi Bridgemen had a stellar match at Libero for MLC and had 15 digs on the night, including some challenging ones near the ground. Grace Kieselhorst led in kills, racking up 15 in her second match back from injury.

The Knights finished with 28 kills as a team, with over half of them coming in the closely contested second set. Northwestern countered that with 40 kills as a team, including an impressive .320 hitting percentage.

MLC (3-11, 1-1) has a week off until their next match against Crown. The two teams will face off on Friday, September, 29 at 7 p.m. in the LSC gymnasium.