BEAUMONT – Central Arkansas put up an overwhelming offensive display and used it to shoot past the Lamar University volleyball team for a straight-set 3-0 win (25-23, 25-16, 25-16) Thursday night at McDonald Gym in Southland Conference action.  The loss was the first the Cardinals have suffered on its home court this season.
 
Lamar fell to 13-8 on the year and 3-4 in league play while the Bears improved to 11-10 and 7-2 in Southland Conference action.
 
The first set was a tight one and the best for the Cardinals, who held a 9-7 lead at one point. The Cardinals fell back early, 5-2, but was able to tie it with a UCA service error, attack error and kill from Murielle Hlavac. Hlavac finished tied for second on the team with seven kills, behind Autumn Taylor's eight.
 
Once it was tied at 5-5, LU put up a 4-2 run that had kills from Hlavac, Cortney Moore and Taylor. From there, the Bears jumped out to a 17-12 lead, but the Cardinals mounted a comeback to cut it to two at 20-18. Eventually, LU was able to get within one (22-21), but that was the closest it would get.
 
"That is a disappointing loss," said head coach Alan Edwards. "I felt like we fought really hard in the first set, but we didn't play very well in the first set. You have to be able to do both."
 
The second set was tight until the Bears put together a 7-1 rally that turned a 10-8 lead into 17-9. With Amy South serving for four of the points, LU gave up three errors in the run. The third set saw UCA jump out to a quick 6-0 lead, again with South serving, but again LU tried for a comeback but fell short.
 
For the match, Central Arkansas put up a .340 hitting percentage with 44 kills in only three sets.  The league's top offensive player, Heather Schnars, had 20 kills in 41 attempts for a .415 individual hitting percentage. She was the only player in the match with a double-digit kill count. 
 
"We got beaten down by a team that hit the ball harder and jumped higher tonight," said Edwards. "I don't know how we could be complacent with where are, but sometimes I feel like we are a little bit. If we're going to play in the top half of this league, we've got big steps to make.
 
"We have the physical ability to take some of those steps, but we're running out of time," he said.
 
Lamar had a .141 hitting percentage and had 18 attack errors, which doubled that of the Bears. Taylor's eight kills came with a .227 hitting mark, Hlavac put up a .000 count and Moore, who had seven kills on the night, had a .200 percentage.
 
"One of the places where we haven't gotten better, and need to, is in-game adjustments," said Edwards. "Change is hard and it's uncomfortable and I get that, but we talk about it a lot.  We talk about it just about every day. It's just somewhere we have to get better."
 
Haley Morton accounted for 28 assists of Lamar's 31 kills, and Lauren Stahlman had 14 digs which was just ahead of Nicole Parish's eight.
 
The Cardinals will open the back-half of their four-match homestand when they host Northwestern State at 7 o'clock Thursday in McDonald Gym.  The final match of the stand will be on Oct. 24 at 1:00, before the Cardinal football team hosts Central Arkansas.