Bullard acknowledged the sentiment, and then the two teams lived up to it with a fiery performance that gave the fans their money's worth.

The Lady Leopards (15-18) moved to 6-0 in Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference play with a 17-25, 25-17, 19-25, 25-15, 15-12 victory over the Lady Lions at TC Gym.

"It's not exactly what I had in mind, but I'll take it," Reese said. "They put up a fight. I knew they would."

With North Central (11-17, 4-2) entering the match with a chance to tie for the conference lead, Reese knew that there would be very few cheap or easy points.

Almost every point was a battle and that created several long rallies, a few excellent saves, great blocking and solid defense to go along with the excess of power both teams displayed up front.

And the final game was simply brilliant, seemingly showing all of the above on every point.

For a good portion of the night, North Central setter Kate Harrison had her dump shot - a ploy by the setter to hit the ball over the net instead of setting it, to throw off the defense - working, either garnering the easy point or forcing Temple to push it back over without a clean play.

But on the first point of the final set, Temple's Kylie Presswood got things going by showing she was equally good at that maneuver, giving the Lady Leopards the first point as her dump was a perfectly timed shot that went to the opposite corner of the court.

But from that point forward, it was all about the hitters and defense. The teams exchanged points to 5-all, where a mishit by Kelsey Marek gave North Central the first consecutive points of the set and its first lead at 6-5.

A bad dump by Harrison tied it at 6-all, but a service error by Tilatha Akins (Belton) and a kill by Sam Smith gave North Central an 8-6 lead, at which point Reese took a timeout.

Said Reese: "We are down two and I'm just telling them, 'There is no desperation. Two points is easy - you just have to play flat-out defense and you tie it again. You just have to want it more than they do and be smart.'"

The Lady Leopards caught a break on the next point when North Central's Carrie Johnson was called for touching the net. Then the Lady Leopards tied it at nine on Chelsie Padgett's match-high 20th kill, causing Bullard to take a timeout.

"Chelsie was just feeling it," Reese said. "She was all over the place tonight. I think the best thing I did was move her to the outside for two rotations then put her back on the right side when (CoCo Cave) was back up. I had two outside hitters that were struggling and Chelsie just stepped up and played big. She was the star of the match tonight."

After North Central took the next point to go up 10-9, the game-changing point occurred.

Hitters Cave and Padgett threw down attack after attack, just to see libero Leslye Richmond and the North Central defense dig out each one, while NCTC's Danielle Hazzard, a Salado graduate, and Carrie Johnson saw their attacks dug out by Temple libero Rachel Doyle.

"Rachel had some phenomenal pickups tonight," Reese said. "That was awesome to watch."

Finally the point ended when Cave went smart instead of strong, tapping her shot over the blockers to tie the game at 10. With the momentum on their side from perhaps the best point of the night, the Lady Leopards had little trouble closing out the match.

Cave finished with 12 kills and three aces. Doyle had 39 digs and Marek added 15 kills and three blocks for the Lady Leopards.

Hazzard, a freshman, led North Central with 16 kills and Johnson added 13.

"It was an exciting night," Reese said. "I expected it to go five. I just wasn't expecting as big of a roller-coaster as we had. Both sides had roller-coasters. The girls all felt together tonight, and I was glad to see them be able to work together and get through it. Some of the girls that normally don't get overly excited got overly excited tonight."

The Lady Leopards will be at Tyler for a non-conference match Saturday and will host Ranger next Thursday.