Fayetteville Hitters Run Into Tough Defense

Fayetteville’s Courtney Marshall, right, screams Saturday while celebrating a point with her teammates while playing Bentonville in the Class 7A State Volleyball Tournament championship game.
Fayetteville’s Courtney Marshall, right, screams Saturday while celebrating a point with her teammates while playing Bentonville in the Class 7A State Volleyball Tournament championship game.

— Over and over again, Fayetteville outside hitters Courtney Marshall and Hannah Pinter went up, reached their arms back and hammered spikes across the net.

More times than not, though, Bentonville’s players managed to get a hand of the ball and counter Fayetteville’s powerful hitters.

While the Lady Bulldogs attacked the net and had success, they struggled at times Saturday to score points against a stingy Tigers defense that dug up big shots from Marshall, Pinter and Paige Gocke.

As a result, Bentonville - not top-seed Fayetteville - stormed the court of Tiger Arena to celebrate a 22-25, 25-20, 18-25, 25-18, 15-13 win in the championship game of the Class 7A State Tournament.

“They had a great day defensively and were able to dig a lot of balls that normally go down for us,” Fayetteville coach Jessica Phelan said of Bentonville.

Throughout much of the season, the Lady Bulldogs had managed to overpower teams with their dominant outside hitters. Even in an Oct. 19 win over Bentonville in the final match of the regular season, Marshall repeatedly crushed spikes and scored points on the Tigers.

Things were a bit tougher Saturday for Fayetteville while playing in front of a loud crowd on Bentonville’s home court.

“We knew coming into the match that our defense was going to have to pick us up. Fayetteville is a powerful team, and their girls are so tall and strong,” Bentonvillecoach Michelle Coens said.

“We knew we couldn’t get caught up in playing Fayetteville’s kind of game, so we had to rely on our defense. And it came through.”

Marshall led Fayetteville with 18 kills, Pinter added 13 and Gocke finished with 11. However, the Lady Bulldogs balanced offense stalled at times and had trouble getting past the Tigers defense.

After cruising through the third game, Fayetteville was unable to close out thematch in the fourth game. Pinter had back-to-back shots blocked at the net, as Bentonville jumped out to a 11-3 lead and withstood a Fayetteville rally to force a fi fth game.

“We got a little bit tentative in Game 4. We just lost the momentum there in Game 4, and we were able to pick up some steam there going into Game 5,” Phelan said. “We fought back there at the end, and Game 5 was a total backand-forth aff air obviously.

“That’s how the fi fth games go sometimes.”

Sports, Pages 8 on 10/31/2010

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