Lady Tigers overwhelm Butler at home

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

"It's hard. It's hard to stay focused." The Nevada Lady Tigers varsity volleyball team and head coach Becky Lowery faced a substantial battle to keep their focus Tuesday night as they faced the very over-matched Butler Lady Bears.

Head coach Nancy Sutton's Lady Bears were never really in the contest -- especially in the opening set -- as the Lady Tigers were able to cruise their way to a two-set victory by the final scores of 25-5 and 25-11 on Senior Night.

The Lady Tigers got off to a very quick start in the opening set as sophomore Marisa Hughes led them on a 6-0 run before Sutton was forced to use her first timeout. The Lady Bears were still unable to find any answers for anything Nevada was throwing at them, ultimately allowing the Lady Tigers to extend their lead to 11-0 on the heels of the night's first three aces.

Things simply went downhill from there for the Lady Bears as Nevada utilized two quick runs totaling 10 more points to extend the advantage to 19 at 21-2. The Lady Bears were never able to get anything going and eventually got outscored 4-3 down the stretch to drop the opener by a final score of 25-5.

"First game, we did things right," Lowery said. "We passed the ball and we missed a few serves that we probably shouldn't have. But besides that, we had good passes, we had good sets and we hit the ball well and then we blocked the ones that we needed to."

The second set got off to a much slower start for the Lady Tigers as they quickly began to lose their focus. Butler took advantage of that lack of focus and used it to jump out to a quick 2-0 lead.

The Lady Tigers quickly gained their first lead of the second set with a 3-0 run to make it 4-3 and eventually worked their way to an 8-4 advantage. The game stayed fairly even through the early portions as neither team gained more than a four-point lead, but the Lady Tigers wasted little time putting a stop to that as they went on a 6-0 run to open up a nine-point lead at 17-8.

The Lady Tigers took control from that point on, eventually building a 14-point lead at 24-10 before taking the victory by a final score of 25-11.

"When you have a game like that (first one), it's kind of hard to focus for the second game so we had a little bit of a slow start," Lowery said. "We missed a couple of serves and a couple of passes, but then our passing came back and we did a better job of taking care of the ball and they played a little bit better in game two also."

Mariah Mock led the Lady Tigers in kills with 10 and blocks with five while Cassidy Lowery and Hughes each recorded three aces.

Nevada's junior varsity had similar luck on the night as they made quick work of the Lady Bears by the final scores of 25-7 and 25-13.

With that victory, the Lady Tigers kept their hopes of avoiding a sub-.500 finish to the regular season and are now set to head out on the road for the season's final match at Webb City on Thursday, but Lowery openly admitted that it didn't help the Lady Tigers to prepare for what will certainly be a tough contest.

"You hate to have a game like that going into Webb City," Lowery said.

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