HOUSTON — For the first time this season, the Lamar volleyball team held a lead after three sets, but the host Cougars rallied to win the fourth and fifth sets when the Cardinals fell to Houston 3-2 (21-25, 25-23, 25-21, 22-25, 7-15) in the Cougar Classic at Yeoman Fieldhouse Saturday afternoon.

“We have to maintain an aggressive mentality. I told them in the huddle between the third and fourth sets that we have to give them a reason to quit,” said head coach Alan Edwards. “We didn’t quit playing, we just started playing careful.”

The Cardinals had a 19-16 lead in the fourth set, which forced UH to call a timeout. The Cougars responded with three-straight points to tie it at 19-19, then took a lead at 21-19. Three of those points were attack errors from the Cardinals.

“We started to get careful and didn’t attack all the way through,” said Edwards. “It is something we’re working on. I thought the lineup we played to start did a very good job with it.”

Lamar tried to rally back by getting it to a one point deficit, but the Cougars were able to end the set and tie the match on a LU attack error and kill from their kills leader Sarah Afflerbaugh.

Lamar was down 1-0 after a set played. The second set was a back-and-forth battle that featured 10 ties and seven lead changes, the last of which was an attack error from Allerbaugh that put the Cardinals up 24-23. Big Red won the set when Hunter Wise registered another error.