Rising Sun volleyball coach Rich Wilson did not shy away from assigning blame for his team's loss in the opening game of the state semifinals Thursday night at Ritchie Coliseum. "So, a statement. How about I blew the first game? Entirely," Wilson said to start the post match press conference. "We've been working on matching up with their middle hitter so we flopped the rotation around a little bit. Want to know the difference between the first game and the last three? That was it." After switching back to their regular rotation, the Tigers won the next three games to defeat Liberty 18-25, 25-14, 25-18, 25-17 to advance to the Monday, November 23, state title match. "We got back in our normal rotation and said if we're going to lose, we're going to lose from this and not from anything else," Wilson said. "So, the first game is on me. You want to know what happened? I happened on the first game. That's when coaches try to outsmart themselves. That's the third time this year I've done that sort of stuff. You would think I would learn by now." Said Tigers' outside hitter Breanne Haley: "When we start out with something like that and we're not comfortable, it's very obvious…I was way more comfortable with the second lineup." The coach explained it was a three-rotation difference. "In the first game, we had Maddy (Eckerd) serving first, followed by Kenzie (Mackenzie Blevins)" said Wilson. "And in the second, third, and fourth we had Sarah (Williams) start. So rotation six and opposed to rotation four…To my way of thinking, that was the difference. We got off to a slow start and everything snowballed from there. I don't know at what part we started to play again, but somewhere. When the game was out of sight, we started to play again. We got a couple of blocks, got a couple of swings, and I think that turned us on for the rest of the match." The Tigers trailed 20-9 in the opening game before finding a rhythm. That gave Rising Sun some confidence headed into the second game. "I think that helped our confidence level at the end of the match," Rising Sun junior Lacey Swartout said. "[We thought] Wow. We can beat them. We got this. And we started to work together more and communicate which helped a lot…We all just had to shake it off because we knew that we would have to play three more games to win it." With Williams the Tigers' first server in the second game, Rising Sun stormed out to a 5-0 advantage and built leads of 9-3 and 21-10 on the way to evening the match. "Second game was kind of a 180 role reversal," Wilson said. "Maybe they let up a little bit. I don't know. And the third and fourth game, I thought, were tight all the way until the mid-teens. I think they suffered because their setter Caroline Dangel) was hurt. She jumps sets most everything she does. I think that hurt their flow primarily. It was kind of a shame, but as I say, it's one-third, one-third, one-third, talent, determination, and luck. And usually, injuries are the luck part." The third game was tied at 9-9 before the Tigers gradually pulled away. Liberty (19-4) kept things close early in game four, but again Rising Sun slowly extended its lead. Most of the Tiger players were participating in the state tournament for the third straight season. Swartout, who finished with a match-high 25 kills, said that know-how was critical. "I think having all the experience is great," Swartout said. "It makes us super comfortable, because freshman year when we walked into this gym, we thought it was huge and it was just insane. This year we walked in and it felt kind of small. It was pretty nice." Haley was surprised the team seemed calm heading into the match. "When we walked in I asked everybody if they were nervous," Haley said. "And they said, 'no'. It was the weirdest felling because I was like, 'I should be nervous.' But I didn't get nervous until we started playing and we started losing and I was like, 'Well, maybe I should've been nervous'." It's the weirdest feeling, but I'm way more comfortable here." Haley had eight kills for the match. In her third match as the starting setter, Blevins recorded 30 assists. The Rising Sun-Liberty state semifinal was the marquee matchup Thursday night and featured the 2A schools with the best resumés. Wilson was asked if it was the de facto state title match. "I will say this," Wilson said. "Traditionally, the west region is the strongest region. It doesn't mean you don't find a team coming out of the east or the south or the north that's just as strong…I would never say this is the equivalent of the state championship game because we have one more to play. And that's going to be our entire focus for the whole weekend." Rising Sun (22-1) will play Patuxent in the state championship match Monday, November, 23, at 6 p.m. Patuxent topped Hereford 25-18, 13-25, 25-19, 25-18 following the Tigers' win Thursday night. The 13-time region champion Tigers will be appearing in their seventh state title match. Rising Sun won a state title in 2006 and 2007. Comments are closed.
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