And that can help explain why Reese and the Lady Leopards had nothing to smile about after romping Ranger 25-17, 25-12, 25-11 Tuesday night at TC Gym to improve to 15-11 overall ad 3-0 in the Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference.
In fact, not only were the Lady Leopards not smiling, but Reese was yelling at them, made them run and there seemed to be a little bickering among the players. Disharmony? Contentiousness? Hostility? Are the Lady Leopards falling apart?
Not hardly. More like they just needed anything to be able to challenge themselves, and it wasn’t coming from Ranger. But because it wasn’t, there was a sense that it wasn’t Temple’s best effort.
“They didn’t play the best that they’ve played,” Reese said of her team. “They don’t have the opportunity to choose between, ‘We can slack off this game and we can play hard this game.’ When we get to nationals there is no choice.”
If the Lady Leopards were indeed “slacking off” against Ranger, it would be scary to think what the score might have been had they played hard.
In the first game, the Lady Leopards did give away most of the points that Ranger won. In fact, 11 of Ranger’s 17 points came either off a service error, lift or mishit by Temple, and five of the other six were created by Temple mistakes, including overpasses and weak hits.
“When you have mental breaks you tend to slip up,” Reese said. “All the errors we gave them - that’s ridiculous to have 16 unforced errors in one set. That’s a lack of mental focus and a lack of caring what you are doing.”
Thing got better for the Lady Leopards in the second set, as freshman outside hitter Precious Sanders and sophomore middle blocker Sara Heger began to dominate. The duo accounted for eight of Temple’s first 10 points, either on kills or blocks, as the Lady Leopards charged to a 10-4 lead.
And during that run, the Lady Leopards had rallied off seven consecutive points and were looking almost unstoppable.
But the momentum was stopped briefly when Ranger’s Amber McKinney put down a hard spike. It appeared that Melissa Padgett had made a pancake save on the ball, but the referees blew the whistle and said it hit the floor - much to the dismay of Reese and the Lady Leopards.
It seemingly wasn’t a big issue because Temple still led 10-5, but it was enough to distract the Lady Leopards for a few points. Three more unforced errors and a kill by Ranger’s Kayli Cooper cut the lead to 10-9 before Academy product Heather Lisenbe got things rolling again with an authoritative spike from the left side.
Reese used the set to play most of her reserves, keeping several normal starters on the bench the entire game.
“I was hoping I’d get everybody in,” she said. “Even though this is a conference match, we need to have a good bench and that’s why they got yelled at.”
Reese was able to do more of that in the third set, moving normal setter Cheyenne Craigen to an outside hitter role. She had three kills in the game and also was instrumental at the service line, producing three straight winners to help the Lady Leopards expand the lead to 16-6.
Meanwhile, Sanders and Lisenbe continued to dominate and ended the match with a combined 25 kills.
“She usually gets a lot of sets passed to her,” Reese said of Sanders. “She is just putting them away now.”
Heger finished with eight kills and five blocks, Padgett had 12 digs and five kills and Cami Statsny had 13 digs and two aces.
“Talking to (Ranger coach Terry Simpson) before the match, he told me his girls tend to fight hard the first game then kind of give up,” Reese said. “So that could have been just characteristic for them, but it’s also kind of disheartening when everything you try is blocked down or dug up. It was just too easy for my girls, so I can imagine what (Ranger) felt like.”
And Reese admitted that keeping the mental focus in a match like that can be tough, which can, in turn, lead to the problems Temple experienced.
“You just hate playing these matches,” Reese said. “These are always tough matches because they are not a team that challenges you physically. You have to be mentally tough and know that you have to step on the court no matter who it is and no feelings are involved. I take responsibility for that. That’s me not being tough on them in practice and making sure they are disciplined. That’s going to change.”
The Lady Leopards will be at Cisco on Thursday, then return home to face No. 18 Laredo at 1 p.m. Saturday in a non-conference match.
“They are in a good spot right now - as long as we keep working hard,” Reese said of her players.
mhood@temple-telegram.com
