MOUNT VERNON, Ohio – The Lawrence Tech men's volleyball team upended host Mount Vernon Nazarene in a five-set thriller to advance to the Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference Tournament Semifinals with a 25-14, 23-25, 25-12, 17-25, 15-12 victory in a No. 5 at No. 4 seed matchup at Ariel Arena on Tuesday evening. The Cougars see their season end with a 14-11 overall record. WHAC Men's Volleyball Tournament Page

Redshirt junior Brendon Down paced a balanced LTU attack with 19 kills (.238), followed by freshman Mario Cid with 17 (.393), classmate Gustavo Machado 
had 14 (.290) and junior JT McCarthy added 11. The Blue Devils outhit MVNU for the match, .252 to .129, thanks to sophomore Nathaniel Brownlee directing the attack with 58 assists.

Spencer Stanley led the Cougars with a match-high 20 kills, Jaysen Matsumoto dished 40 assists and had nine digs, and Tyler Monnin made 11 digs.

Defensively, graduate student Matheus Andrade led LTU with a match-best 22 digs. Cid, Machado and Down all completed double-doubles with 12, 11 and 10 digs, respectively. McCarthy chipped in five total blocks to top all student-athletes.

Lawrence Tech hit .462 and held the Cougars to just a .027 clip to race to an 11-point opening set win.

MVNU evened the match by taking the second set by just two points. The Cougars, who took their first lead at 2-1 on a Noah Weinberg kill, hit almost .300 and rallied from a 23-22 deficit.

The Blue Devils' offense ramped up again to take a 2-1 lead after connecting on .571 on their attack attempts, while the Cougars were limited to .000. 

Lawrence Tech, however, hit below zero in the fourth and MVNU evened the match at two sets apiece with an eight-point win. The Cougars closed on a 10-4 run to force a decisive stanza.

But LTU regrouped in the fifth. Neither team led by more than two points until the Blue Devils broke a 7-7 tie with a three-point run via a trio of Cid kills. The Cougars got to within 13-12, but Machado and Cid put away the victory with kills back-to-back.

Despite the close score, LTU dominated the match statistically: kills (67-46), digs (66-45), attack percentage and total points (76-59).

Lawrence Tech will travel to Sylvania, Ohio, on Friday (7 p.m.) to square off against WHAC regular-season champion and top-seed Lourdes.