The Student Activity Center was loud and ready to erupt with a Tiger victory. Unfortunately, in spite of the team and crowd giving their all, the home team Tigers were unable to come up with a conference victory over Indian Hills on Tuesday night.
The match was highly contested from the beginning with both teams being aggressive from the opening whistle. The two teams were trading big swing for big swing and clutch dig for clutch dig. A back and forth first set would eventually see the Tigers prevail 26-24.
"Both teams came out of the locker rooms ready to play" stated Tiger Head Coach, Justin Hoskins. "Ironically, the first set was actually our worst offensive set of the night. However, we serve received well and our defense kept giving us opportunities with some big-time digs."
Unfortunately, the rest of the night did not go as planned, as the Tigers would fall short in the next three sets 18-25, 21-25, 20-25.
When asked about dropping sets two, three, and four despite all three sets being fairly evenly played, Hoskins pointed to two areas. "I think the two things that hurt us in those close sets tonight were our lack of runs at the service line and our inability to move on from a tough break or call at times. Volleyball is often decided by which team is able to string together a couple of three or four point runs in a set. Unfortunately, we never really got on a roll with our serve tonight and we struggled to minimize their runs.
The loss eliminated the Tigers from postseason contention for the season, as only two teams from Region XI will advance to district tournaments after restructuring at the national level prior to the season. However, the Tigers still have six regular season matches to play beginning with a trip to Iowa Lakes on Thursday, October 18 for a 7 PM matchup.
