Game three come-back set the tone for game four
Aldine – The wildcats trailed 18-7 midway through game three, but after a quick timeout, regained its focus and patiently dominated game four to eliminate the Cinco Ranch tigers 3-1 (25-20, 23-25, 26-24, 25-21) in the Class 5A Region III Quarterfinals Tuesday night at the Campbell Center.
The Win moves the lady Wildcats into the regional Semis where they will meet Clear Falls Friday at the Campbell Center at 8 p.m.
In a stage setting game three, Cy-Woods trailed 18-7 with little hope of getting out of the game with a win. But the unimaginable happed, as the Lady Wildcats regained its composure with a stunning comeback win.
“I thought we were well prepared against them. I thought we showed up and played well. I’m disappointed in not finishing game three, when we had it. They (Cy-Woods) came back and fought, fought and fought. That took a lot out of us and we didn’t get over that until midway through that fourth game. But they played well. We should have finished the third game and gone on with the fourth game in a better standing. But we didn’t,” says Cinco Ranch coach Tammy Laurence.
When the game was on the line, the lady wildcats took a timeout to regain its focus. Not much was working, as Cinco capitalized on its opportunities, making Cy-Woods earn every point it would need. However, the brief reprieve helped calm a youthful Wildcat team.
“I think we’re going to learn so much from this game,” Cy-Woods coach Ashley Ahlfinger said. At this level, all of these teams are great. Lots of ups and downs. I’m extremely proud of girls for the comeback. We are really young. We have three seniors. We had other kids that got a little rattled. I said, hey guys you need to calm down and play our game, believe in our system and they just calmed down. And that comeback was a great life lesion.”
Marisa Guzman led the Wildcats with 19 kills and 16 digs. Olivia Ogwumike, who is the younger sister of WNBA rookie standout Nneka, added 10 kills. Victoria Arenas had 16 digs, Shayli Schulz with 14 and Ashley Rogas finished with 13.
“Ashley always has a great team and I hope they win this region. Chloe’s been around for four years. She’s an excellent setter. She can run an offense like no other. So we knew it was going to be a fast pace game and we knew we had to step up our passes. We had to get our blocks or at least slow the ball down. We had to give them a lot of fast pace balls. We couldn’t just give them a bunch of free balls. Things were going right for us. We just needed to step our game up a notch and I think we did. We just didn’t capitalize on that third game. I’m very proud of my girls. Nobody thought we would come out and win district and we did. They’ve played tough and we’ve gotten better as the season has gone on,” said Coach Laurence.
“They (Cinco Ranch) have an incredible volleyball background. They’ve been a lot of places. There always successful and very well coached. They have a really big blocks. Their outsides are really strong, I just can’t say enough good this about them,” said coach Ahlfinger.
