KENOSHA, Wis. – Roosevelt continued to knock on the door of a second win but came up short with two back-and-forth defeats Friday at the Hampton Inn Invitational hosted by Parkside in Wisconsin.

The Lakers (1-6) took the opening set of the morning match against Winona State, but came out on the wrong end of the next three sets. The afternoon match against Missouri S&T was an unfortunate sweep with Roosevelt within a few points of taking the second and third sets against the Miners.

Friday's first match quickly tested the Lakers' resolve as the Warriors spent much of the first set playing with the lead. An early 5-0 run put Roosevelt in a four-point hole, and even after rallying to tie the set, the Lakers could not seem to take a lead on Winona State. That changed with an Aleksandra Barac kill that sparked the set-ending 6-0 run to give the Lakers a 25-20 set win.

The second set played out much like the first one with Winona State getting out to a big lead then Roosevelt slowly pulling the Warriors back within striking distance. However, this time it was the Warriors with the clutch run to even the match with a 25-20 set victory. The Lakers were the team playing from ahead in the third set, leading by as many as five points at 18-13 before the Warriors came back to claim the set 25-22.

A deciding fifth set looked likely when the Lakers scored eight of the first 10 points in the fourth set. However, the Warriors were able to execute late in the set to close it out with a 25-21 win. Lihi Zaibert led the team with 12 kills and Barac had 11 before leaving the match with an undisclosed injury. Isa Grana had a team-high 18 assists, two more than Zoe Hutchinson's 16, and Cydney Martinez grounded the defense again with 19 digs.

Roosevelt's second game of the day was a statistical anomaly as the Lakers' attack struggled, but they still managed to find themselves in the thick of the final two sets. Abigail Wutka had a season-best 11 kills while filling in for Barac against the Miners, but Roosevelt hit just .070 as a team in the match. Yet after Missouri S&T raced out to a 25-17 win in the first set, there was not much to separate the two teams.

Missouri S&T took the early lead in the second set, but timely offense from Roosevelt kept it competitive. Wutka started a 4-0 run to tie the set at 13 with three different Lakers recording kills and Lillian Hallahan capping it off with an ace. Even when it looked like the Miners would run away with the set after a 5-0 run broke a 17-17 tie, the Lakers scored the next six points with three kills from Wutka and a Zaibert ace.

However, the Miners came back to take the set 25-23 and held on for a 25-20 win in the third set. The final set was another tightrope walk for Missouri S&T and it could never put away Roosevelt's scrappiness. It took a pair of challenges late in the match to turn the tide in the Miners' favor as two points awarded to Roosevelt were overturned on replay to dampen the Lakers' momentum.

Martinez had 12 digs to lead the Lakers in the match while Hutchinson edged out Grana with 10 assists to Grana's nine. However, Grana did have four aces on the day to lead Roosevelt at the service line. The Lakers did have a season-high eight aces against Winona State then added four more in the loss to Missouri S&T.

UP NEXT: Roosevelt faces its first repeat opponent this season Saturday when it faces off against McKendree at 9 a.m. The Lakers lost in four tough sets to the Bearcats last
season at the Midwest Crossover in October.