BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- UPIKE Volleyball continued its hot start Friday with a pair of five-set wins at the Mid-South Conference Crossover Challenge in Bowling Green.

UPIKE (3-0) defeated Point (2-4) early in the afternoon in about as tight of an affair as possible (25-20, 19-25, 24-26, 26-24, 20-18), then rallied again in the evening to defeat Martin Methodist (0-2) in another close match (25-14, 22-25, 23-25, 25-22, 15-13).

Against Point, neither team could pull away early in the first set before a pair of 4-0 runs late gave UPIKE the set. Noelani Simpson had six of her team-high 23 kills in the first set.

Point came back strong in set two, hitting .310 while holding UPIKE to just a .095 attack percentage.

The craziness began in the third set, which was the first of three in a row that needed extra points to decide a winner. Point had a 5-0 run and a 4-0 run in the set but both were immediately answered to keep the set close, and UPIKE was a point away from taking the set at 24-23, before the Skyhawks scored three straight points to clinch the set.

Set four was essentially a role reversal of set three, where the Bears held a healthy lead for most of the set before an 8-2 run gave Point the lead, which it held until set point at 24-22. UPIKE then rallied with four straight points, capped off by two kills from Hunter Clewis, who had 12 total kills in the match.

The deciding set was the Amanda Gooding show, as she had seven of her 20 kills in the fifth, including the final two that gave UPIKE the victory.

The nightcap match was very similar to the first of the day, where UPIKE fell behind two sets to one after winning the first. However, the main difference against Martin Methodist was that UPIKE let the RedHawks beat themselves with 28 total errors committed.

Except for the second set, UPIKE didn't allow a set hitting percentage above .167, including a -.087 mark in the fifth where Martin Methodist had five errors on just three kills.

​​​​​​​UPIKE wasn't exceptionally clean either, but Simpson led the way with another 21 kills to help guide the Bears to victory.

The Bears have two more matches in the Crossover Challenge today, the first at 10:00 a.m. against Xavier (La.) and then again at 4:00 p.m. against Brescia.