NETTLETON – Nettleton made it look easy on Saturday.
The Tigers swept O’Bannon 3-0 (25-6, 25-10, 25-7) to advance to the second round of the Class 3A playoffs. Nettleton will face Belmont in the next round.
“I think honestly we’re just glad to get one over with,” Nettleton head coach Abigail Anderson said. “I think coming in, we struggled in our last game against Amory just a little bit, so just getting one game for playoffs under our belt is good. We came in early this morning ready to work. We had breakfast, practice before we played today and we came in ready to roll today. They came in ready to play.”
Nettleton (20-13) came out firing, scoring the first eight points and 11 of the first 12. The Tigers ended the first set with a 14-3 run. Nettleton pulled away in the second set after scoring nine straight points.
The Tigers started the third set exactly like the first one, jumping out to 8-0 and 11-1 leads. From there, Nettleton easily finished off the sweep.
“They came out ready to go, and I’m super, super proud of that. We’ve been a team that has struggled in the beginning some this season,” Anderson said. “But to see them come out right off the bat and play hard, so proud of that.”
Nettleton overwhelmed O’Bannon (7-12) throughout the contest, but the Tigers punished O’Bannon repeatedly on serves in particular.
“Honestly, I’m very proud of that,” Anderson said. “We do serving probably 60% of our practice. Everything that we do involves serving just because that is the most crucial part of the game. So, I’m super proud of our serving today. We missed very few, and honestly it helped a lot. That’s what I told them, if you can’t serve, you can’t win.”
Nettleton also effectively spread the ball around on offense. Chloe Humble had eight kills for the Tigers.
“It was a good pass-set-swing type thing,” Humble said. “The hitters were on. Most of all the hitters were on, not just a few, everybody was. And the sets were pretty good, too.”