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Lady Tigers drop tough home match
By Eric Wade
Daily Mail Sports Editor
"We wanted to beat them bad and we know we're going to have to, eventually, to keep going on with our season. So I don't know if that pressure kind of psyched us up and psyched us out."
Though the Nevada Lady Tigers and head coach Ashley Thoreson have had their share of successes through the early portions of this season, things were very different in Tuesday night's return to Wynn Gymnasium. The Lady Tigers entered the night knowing it very well could be a preview of the 2013 Class 3, District 12 championship match and it appeared as though the pressure of that knowledge was simply too much for Thoreson's young squad to handle.
"We came off a great weekend," Thoreson said. "We had a great week last and we really came out, I mean, we had plans to win it. We were confident, we had a pretty good practice yesterday and we just couldn't seem to get anything going tonight."
The Lady Tigers entered the night fresh off of a dominant performance in the Pittsburg tournament on Saturday in which they went 5-1 on the way to winning the tournament for the second time in as many seasons. That momentum and the plans the Lady Tigers had coming into the night didn't carry over, however, and Carl Junction took full advantage, taking the best-of-five match by the final scores of 25-13, 25-11 and 25-23.
"We didn't handle, I don't think, the pressure very well," Thoreson said. "It just seemed like we were just trying to stay above water. You know, we were just fighting to keep up."
Things didn't look good for the Lady Tigers right from the start as Thoreson's squad took the court looking flat and simply couldn't get much of anything going through the first set. Communication and nearly every aspect of Nevada's defense seemed to be the biggest points of issue for the Lady Tigers and Carl Junction wasted little time capitalizing on the openings those struggles provided.
After the Lady Tigers found themselves up, 3-1, the Lady Bulldogs went on a quick 6-0 run and never looked back. By the time all was said and done, the opening set turned out to really not be much of a challenge for the Lady Bulldogs as they cruised to a 12-point win.
"Carl Junction is a good team," Thoreson said. "They're scrappy, they make very few errors and we had more errors tonight in the first set and a half than we've had in a long time."
Serve receive continued to be a major point of struggle for the Lady Tigers as the second set begin. Riding the momentum of a dominant performance in the opener, the Lady Bulldogs picked right up where they left off, keeping the pedal to the metal with aggressive serves and strong play on both offense and defense in the second set.
"They served us really aggressive and my passers could not handle the serve," Thoreson said. "So then, we all just kind of started getting mad at each other instead of trying to come together."
That aggression ultimately allowed head coach Sarah Wall's Lady Bulldogs to pull out to an early 5-0 lead and they were simply able to cruise from that point on as Nevada continued to simply be unable to get much going. By the time all was said and done, the hole the Lady Tigers had already found themselves in had simply gotten bigger as Carl Junction took a 14-point second-set victory.
By the time the third set began, it looked as though the Lady Tigers were simply too far behind to make a comeback, but that didn't stop Thoreson's squad from playing its best set of the night. With dramatically increased intensity and focus, the Lady Tigers gave Wall's squad all it wanted through the majority of the final set, but it ultimately proved to not be quite enough as the Lady Tigers simply couldn't put the set away.
"I felt like we had so many opportunities to really just keep going and instead, we kind of just waited for them to give us the game," Thoreson said. "I mean, you can tell by the way they play, they're not going to do that."
Carl Junction took full advantage of those missed opportunities and thanks to a pair of late timeouts by each squad, pulled out the two-point victory at the end.
Though the Lady Tigers didn't quite work as a team enough to meet their coach's expectations, they did spread out the statistical production well throughout the night. By the time the match came to an end, nine different players on the Nevada roster had at least one dig and five had one or more kills.
Junior Morgan McNeley led the way on defense for the Lady Tigers as she finished the night with seven digs. As she has been all season long, Rilie Good was the most significant force on the offensive side of the ball for Nevada, finishing the night with 11 kills and three stuff blocks.
The Lady Tigers' varsity squad wasn't the only one to struggle on the night. Coach Megan Krogen's junior varsity squad lost to the Lady Bulldogs in two sets, by the final scores of 25-8 and 25-12, while coach Ranea Schulze's freshmen split their two sets.
With the loss, the Lady Tigers' varsity squad fell to 8-4 on the year. Next on the schedule for the Lady Tigers is Thursday, when the Lady Tigers of Stockton High School invade Wynn Gymnasium.
The first of two matches on the schedule that night is set to begin at 6 p.m.