HATTIESBURG — After falling behind 2-1, the PCS Lady ‘Cats needed something to happen in order to make the comeback in the fourth and fifth sets. With a combination of Kinley Yawn’s attack, mental toughness and a little bit luck, they did just that and beat Oak Grove 3-2 (25-17, 22-25, 11-25, 25-17, 15-11) at Rees Gymnasium.
“I wish I knew,” PCS coach Jacob Morgan joked when asked what he told his team going into the fourth set. “We just calmed down, stayed focused, had a ton of energy and showed tremendous mental toughness.”
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Oak Grove’s Emma Roberts was proving to be unstoppable in the second and third set, but the Lady Warriors couldn’t get her back on the floor near the end of the fourth set and decisive fifth.
“In volleyball, you can get stuck in a few rotations, and then it’s hard to come back. I think that’s what happened,” Oak Grove coach Sherry Wallace said. “Both teams played great tonight, and I’m really proud of my girls.”
“That helped us out a lot,” Morgan said about Roberts on the bench. “The big thing we say is ‘Control what we can control.’ We can’t control what the other teams or official do, but that definitely helps.”
Roberts finished the night with a game-high 16 kills, as most of her damage came in the second and third sets with a 10 kills combined in the two games.
“She’s awesome,” Wallace said. “She’s coming along, and I can’t wait to see her progress throughout the season.”
In the first set, PCS took control late in the game thanks to three kills by Yawn, which included two in the final three points. The teams stayed even until PCS scored three straight points to make it 17-14, then finished the set on a 5-0 run to earn the first win of the night.
The next two sets, however, didn’t go the direction the Lady Bobcats wanted it to go.
Oak Grove used two quick starts in the next two sets to pace its victories. In the second set, the Lady Warriors jumped up 8-2, but PCS battled back to make it 14-14. That’s when Roberts started to catch fire. With Oak Grove leading 17-15, Roberts recorded her fifth kill of the game to make it 18-15, then she had three straight kills to help finish off the set.
“That first set, our momentum just wasn’t there,” Wallace said. “We started really slow, but in that second and third set, though, we really fought hard. There’s always a difference from when we start slow in the beginning or when we start on our A-game.”
She wasn’t done either, after tallying five kills in the second, she matched that total with five more in the third. Oak Grove, again, jumped up big early with a 10-2 lead, then it pushed the advantage to 17-3, as Roberts collected three more kills. The Lady Warriors cruised to the 14-point win, while Roberts added two more kills.
Morgan says passing was the biggest issue for his team in those two sets.
“We struggled passing the ball,” he said. “That was our main problem. That second set, we were able to pass it a little better and we came back. We were able to come back and fix some mistakes. That third set really got away from us.”
With victory slipping out of reach, the Lady Bobcats started to show what Morgan described as “mental toughness” by jumping up 13-7 in the fourth, then they took a commanding 23-13 lead. Olivia Barker had three aces and a kill in the set, Addison Brown had a big block and Yawn tallied her sixth kill of the night.
In the fifth and final set, a 7-2 start by PCS was quickly wiped clean after Oak Grove scored seven of the next nine points to tie it at 9. After Oak Grove took an 11-10 lead, Yawn and the Lady ‘Cats scored the final five points to claim the match.
Yawn had two of her nine kills in those final five points, too.
“She’s our best hitter by far,” Morgan said. “Because we struggled at passing, it’s tough to get a good set where we want it. That fifth set, when it was 11-10, I looked at Olivia Baker and I told her she better set Kinley four times in a row.”
