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WESTERVILLE, Ohio – The Otterbein volleyball team secured another piece of program history Saturday afternoon, toppling Mount Union in straight sets to clinch a share of the Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) regular-season championship.

The Cardinals, winning by scores of 25-23, 25-11, 25-22, claim their first-ever regular-season title and will be the top seed in next week's OAC Tournament by virtue of their head-to-head win at Ohio Northern.

"You typically don't see this type of jump very often," said 11th-year head coach Monica Wright, whose team finished just slightly above .500 last year. "We had a change in our work ethic throughout the offseason and obviously added some new talent, so I'm not totally shocked."

Otterbein, standing 26-3 overall and 8-1 within the league, will host John Carroll in an OAC Tournament quarterfinal matchup Tuesday night in the Rike Center.

The Cardinals led the entire first set, opening an early 10-6 lead and then hanging on down the stretch to assume an advantage. Otterbein was then dominant in the second frame by flying out to a 13-5 margin and coasting to a 2-0 match lead.

The job was finished after a tight third set, which saw ties at points 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21 and 22 before Otterbein rattled off three in a row. The final point was punctuated by a kill from senior Marie Thornton.

"This was the best match we have played all year," Wright said. "A unique part about volleyball is that there is no clock, and you have to win 25 points in every set one way or another. Even through some tough stretches, I think our talent comes back around to prevail… and you saw that today."

Junior Hadley Sterett turned in a match-high 16 kills while senior Morgan Lowenkamp had 11 in the middle as Otterbein hit .200 as a team. Thornton was very efficient with a line of 8-1-12 (.583), and Alana King-Mendenhall was right there to contribute a 5-2-10 (.300) effort.

Setter Andrea Miller handed out 38 assists while libero Ashlyn Leon had 16 digs for the defense.

Mount Union, falling to 23-4 and 7-2 in the OAC with the loss, had 20 assists from Riley Schenk but no player reach double-digit kills. The Raiders will be the third seed next week.

Otterbein finished off its tri-match afternoon with a four-set win over Ohio Wesleyan by scores of 23-25, 25-17, 25-23, 25-15. Lowenkamp, a surefire candidate for OAC Player of the Year, became the seventh player in program history to reach 1,000 career kills during the first set. She has missed 26 matches in her career but just one this season.

"I'm really happy for Morgan because she's handled a lot of adversity with injuries and illnesses," Wright explained. "Her consistency this year has been incredible and she really hasn't had a bad match. If you roll back through box scores, I'm not sure you'll find another player in this league that has managed to turn in solid stat lines and affect each match through a variety of circumstances."

Lowenkamp, Thornton and fellow senior Brett Bey were recognized at the beginning of the day for their contributions to the program since arriving.

Otterbein now stands one win shy of matching the single-season record, set back in 2013 when the Cards went 27-8 and won their first-ever NCAA contest.

Click HERE to view the OAC Tournament page and obtain more postseason information.