Sikeston moves closer to .500 mark, beats Portageville in two sets
SIKESTON -- After a disappointing finish in last Thursday's loss to Dexter the Sikeston Lady Bulldogs got back to their winning ways on Tuesday against visiting Portageville.
Overcoming an early five-point deficit in the first set Sikeston went on to sweep the match and earn their eighth win of the season, 25-19, 25-19.
"Both games we started off with a little bit of a lull," Sikeston head coach Steve Beydler said. "I think they were comfortable tonight feeling like they were gonna be able to pull it out so they didn't get down or worried about a three or four point deficit or whatever they had at the time."
With Portageville (8-13) taking advantage of good serving and a couple Sikeston (8-10) miscues, they were able to open the match on a 6-1 run that proved to be their largest of the night.
It didn't take Sikeston long, however, to right the ship and come back for an 8-8 tie that forced Portageville to take a timeout.
The two teams fought point-for-point the rest of the way until two-straight aces by Trenice Greer gave Sikeston a decisive 21-17 edge late in the set.
Portageville was able to take two of the next three points to close back to within three, at 22-19, but Sikeston went on a 3-0 run to close out the set.
Able to prevent the kind of early hole they found themselves to start the night, Sikeston only trailed by two early points in the first set before scoring seven of eight points during a run to take an 8-4 lead.
Portageville was able to come back and tie things up at 12-12 before a pair of aces from Lauren Beydler helped kick-start a 7-1 rally by Sikeston that once again gave them the edge.
Using their last timeout while down 22-15, Portageville managed to take four of the next six points, but during that same run Sikeston had set up match point.
One final kill from Alexis Odom closed out the Sikeston win.
"I couldn't be more pleased with the effort we had out there tonight," Portageville head coach Barry Branscum said. "I thought we had a pretty good match. We had a good lead in the first set and then we got down a little bit, but I thought we fought back at the end.
"In the second set we didn't get off to a very good start. But I'm very pleased with the way we fought back actually and made it a pretty close set there."
Once again having a solid night at the net, Greer led Sikeston in both kills (8) and assists (11) while Lauren Beydler finished with a pair of aces and five assists.
Monica Carter and Kalli Williams had three kills each with Odom adding a pair of kills to Sikeston's cause.
"The one thing that I wasn't pleased with is that a lot of times we seemed to be a little out of control in that we weren't consistently getting a good pass, set and hit," Steve Beydler said. "We were kind of getting pulled into this long sloppy rally and once in awhile they got the point and sometimes we got the point.
"That was better than the last match (against Dexter) where we had these long rallies and would lose the point."
Sikeston will get the chance to pull to within one game of .500 tonight when Notre Dame comes town.