ST. LOUIS [BOX SCORE] – The Missouri Baptist men's volleyball team defeated McKendree University (Ill.) 3-1 (25-20, 25-20, 22-25, 25-21) on Wednesday in Lebanon, Ill.

The Spartans (4-0) took an early lead in set one. Although the Bearcats closed the scoring gap to one, the Spartans advanced with Chris Flood at the service line and lengthened its lead to a 25-20 set one win.

In set two Missouri Baptist maintained its momentum and notched its highest hitting percentage of the match at 0.433 for a 25-20 set win.

McKendree came back from the locker room ready to fight. MCK took its first lead of the match early in set three and swiped the set from MBU 25-22 as the Bearcats recorded a hitting percentage only 0.030 higher than that of the Spartans.

MCK faced another deciding set, but Missouri Baptist was too much for the Bearcats to overcome as the team notched a 25-21 set four victory. The Spartans posted a hitting percentage of 0.429 compared to the 0.143 hitting percentage of McKendree. MBU also recorded its highest number of kills in the match with 17.

Chris Flood led the attack with 19 kills and a hitting percentage of 0.464 and six total digs. Mico Janicijevic followed Flood with 11 kills of his own.

Race Munger who saw his first appearance as a Spartans with eight kills on the night.

Kyle Foley fed the offense with 40 total assists on the night for an average of 10 assists per set.

Missouri Baptist will now compete in Grand View's (Iowa) top tier tournament the Molten Invitational on January 29-30 in which seven of the top 10 teams will also be competing. The team will face No. 5 Warner University (Fla.), No. 4 St. Ambrose (Iowa) and for the second time this season No. 2 Grand View.