Lady Tigers rally past T.R. Miller

Published 12:00 am Thursday, September 1, 2016

Ashley Hughes smashes the ball back over the net.

Ashley Hughes smashes the ball back over the net.

The Straughn Lady Tigers picked up a big 3-1 win in Tuesday’s home-opener against T.R. Miller.

“I thought we played pretty good at times,” Straughn head coach Daniel Rodgers said. “There were times that we didn’t play as well, but overall I thought it was a pretty good performance.”

Straughn came out playing strong in the opening set, and came away with a 25-22 victory.

“The first set went back-and-forth pretty much the whole time,” Rodgers said. “We did a have few good runs during that set. They beat us twice last year, and I think after that first set we lost our focus a little bit.”

In the second set, T.R. Miller stepped up with a 25-13 win to even the match at 1-1.

“We just lost our focus in the second set,” Rodgers said. “We made a few mistakes, and T.R. Miller isn’t the type of team that you can give points to.”

Straughn battled back for 25-16 wins in the third and fourth sets to defeat T.R. Miller 3-1.

“I told them after that second set, ‘Yea, T.R. Miller is good, but we are good too,’” Rodgers said. “We turned it on in the third and fourth sets. We went on some runs, which wasn’t something that we hadn’t been doing well.”

Rodgers said he was excited to see the way his team played in the final sets of the day.

“The number of attacks that we were able to get was probably the biggest thing for us,” Rodgers said. “Sarah Langford did an outstanding job setting up attacks. Hannah Lawless and Ashley Hughes each had a few kills. We had a lot of girls that were really swinging well.”

Rodgers said that the win was important for the program.

“We knew coming in that T.R. Miller was going to be a great team,” Rodgers said. “The girls fought extremely hard, and that was a big win for our program. It really was.”

Langford finished the evening with 27 assists.

Lawless had 21 kills, and Hughes finished with 8 kills.

Straughn travels to Opp tonight to take on the Lady Bobcats at 4 p.m.