Bravettes bear down, bury Sentinel

It took a little time, a little elbow grease, a couple of small defensive adjustments ... and a few well-thought out words from the coach.

The Flathead Bravettes rallied from a four-point first set deficit to defeat visiting Missoula Sentinel 25-23, 25-19, 25-12 and give coach Leon Wilcox his 200th career victory.

The Bravettes also found themselves trailing the Spartans 7-3 in the second set when Wilcox had seen enough and called timeout.

"I told them they had to go out there and outhustle and outfight that team, because they were outplaying us. (The Spartans) were digging everything we had and we were not responding. We were watching stuff hit the floor," Wilcox said.

"Sentinel was so tough defensively. They had the momentum. We would get up and get big swings and they would bring it back at us," he said.

"We would let them get to us with their defense."

"He said ‘you can beat these guys.' But we need to work together as a team. We went back out and that's exactly what we did and we picked it back up," said junior outside hitter Hannah Sackett.

"We just realized ‘enough of this' and we just put it away," Sackett said.

After that timeout, "the light came on, our defense turned it up and it really made the difference. You've got to have a balance. We were a little too heavy on one end of the game," Wilcox said.

"The second and third game, our blocking went out the window and we were doing amazing. Their best hitter (Morgan McCarthy) couldn't put one away and it just brought their whole team's morale down and brought us up," Sackett said.

"They need to learn to do that from the get-go and not be

prompted in that manner by the coach," Wilcox smiled.

Senior middle Danika Johnson and freshman middle Timi Severson had four blocks each. Defensively, Sarah Aylor led with 12 digs, Sackett had 11 and Emma Lawrence-Yee had 10.

Sackett led all hitters with 15 kills on the night. She had four in the first set, but really turned it up in the second with seven.

The turnaround wasn't quite immediate. Sentinel got its next tip to drop and the Bravettes hit into the net once and were whistled for a double hit.

But they got kills on the next four points, including a huge shot from Johnson on a Spartan overpass.

That left Sentinel coach Patrick Hiller shaking his head.

"She gets so excited and the crowd gets to start yelling ‘Diesel!' and it's like ‘oh, God, ladies,'" he said.

"We rely completely on our back row. This was the first night we've seen them not play well," he said.

Hiller also wasn't happy with the Spartans' serving.

"That first game - if you miss five serves from point 15 on, you are going to lose. We were digging everything they hit in that first game. But (missing those serves) just kind of took the wind out of our sails," Hiller said.

"Then it just kind of snowballed on us. (The Bravettes) got more excited and more excited. They kept riding the wave and we obviously kind of took a backseat to it," he said.

By the time the third set rolled around, "Sentinel didn't know what to do. They had lost it and we were just feeding off it and we were having so much fun," Sackett said.

"Our blocking was amazing ... just phenomenal thanks to Danika (Johnson), and Kwyn (Johnson) and Timi (Severson)."

"That was nice," Wilcox said of the third game.

"We were reading hitters better. I think they got tired of our block and they started hitting shots. We know teams are going to do that.

"(Sackett) was picking up everything in the middle of the floor that they were shooting over and Emma (Lawrence-Yee) definitely got more aggressive defensively in that last half of the match."

The Bravettes are at Western AA leading Helena today.

"That's a team that doesn't make a lot of mistakes. They're not deep offensively, but they have good ball control. They don't make a lot of mistakes and they wear teams down - and they will get the ball to Monica Grimsrud six rotations," he said.

Kills - Sentinel 23 (Morgan McCarthy 7), Flathead 40 (Hannah Sackett 15, Kwyn Johnson 8), Assists - Sentinel 14 (Katie Propp 14), Flathead 38 (Alison Lunde 19, Emily Russell 17), Blocks - Sentinel 3 (McCarthy 2), Flathead 12 (Timi Severson 4, Danika Johnson 4), Aces - Sentinel 8 (Sadie Ahearn 2), Flathead 8 (Lunde 2, Severson 2).