Westmont's Patty Kerman flipped the ball over the net and into a pocket of the floor uncovered by any Mustang defender, giving the Warriors a win in Saturday's opening set and for the moment quieting a rowdy home crowd.
This was not the start The Master's University women's volleyball team wanted. But it's one they've come to embrace.
The 2019 Mustangs thrive not on the ability to cruise through conference competition. They thrive on the ability to regroup.
In the huddle after set one, coach
Allan Vince laid out a road map of how Master's would climb back into the match.
"I said, 'Here's our goals. We need more touches on the block. We need to make our serve calls. We need to have bodies hitting the floor on defense, and we need to cut down on our hitting errors,'" Vince said. "They did all those things and we won."
Indeed. The Mustangs rallied for a 3-1 win over No. 17 Westmont inside The MacArthur Center, beating Westmont at home in back to back years for the first time since 2007-2008 and moving within one win of first place in the Golden State Athletic Conference.
Regan Tate led Master's with 11 kills and
Madi Fay followed with eight kills and three total blocks in what Vince called her most inspired performance on the season.
As a team, it was a decisive turnaround from a 3-0 loss to the Warriors in Santa Barbara in September. Maybe the most notable improvement came at the net.
The Mustangs compiled 20 total blocks, none bigger than Fay's and
Emily Scott's joint rejection of Brooklynn Cheney, which moved the score to 24-18 in favor of Master's in the fourth set. After a four-point Warrior run,
Rebecca Swenning ended the night with a powerful kill.
It was the second time Master's managed to hold Westmont off in a tight set.
Jane Cisar and
Katie Emmerling blocked Cassidy Rea, one of the conference's best attackers, to give Master's a 26-25 lead in the third set, and Tate sealed it with a kill on the ensuing play, raising her arms in celebration.
"We came in here wanting to defend our home court and show the work we've been putting in at practice," said libero
McKenna Hafner, who totaled 13 digs. "… What was different (from the first matchup) was our confidence and resolve to win. We showed a lot of grit, and we weren't going to give up no matter what."
Not even after Master's allowed the Warriors to hit .353 in an uninspiring first set.
"We just talked about how that isn't us," Hafner said of the meeting before set two. "There were a lot of good things. We needed to channel the good things and forget the things that were bad. We just came out firing. We talked about confidence. We talked about playing for the person next to you and not letting anything rattle you."
Katie Emmerling finished with 33 assists for Master's, which rebounded quickly from losses to Hope International and William Jessup earlier in the year, winning the following match in each instance.
Emilye Grace Williams added nine kills in one of her best performances of 2019.
"The atmosphere was absolutely incredible," Williams said. "I loved our student section and all the parents that came out. … It was so loud. I couldn't hear anything."
