The Early Lady Longhorns dropped a straight-set decision to the Dublin Lady Lions Tuesday night 25-21, 25-20, 2522.  Close in each set, but not quite there yet.

In an interview after the game that aired Tuesday morning on KOXE, Derrick Stuckly of Brownwoodnews.com got the following comments from Early Coach Natalie Whitewood.

“I thought we played OK,” Whitewood said. “I think we’re in transition between finding a leader, finding someone who is going to take over on the court. We have to find the person that will step up and take over games for us.  We never quit, they kept fighting even when we were down, they kept pushing,” Whitewood said. “If we eliminate our missed serves in the first two sets we’re right back where we need to be. We also had to switch some people around. Some people weren’t playing super well so we switched mid-set and it worked great for us.”

In the opening set, Early trailed 16-11 but reeled off five straight points – thanks to a block from Holt and a couple of kills from Summers – to draw even at 16. However, the Lady Horns surrendered the next five points to fall behind 21-16 and were unable to recover.

The second set saw the Lady Horns fall into an 11-4 hole. Early gradually attempted to rally, closing the gap to 22-20 at one point, but were unable to complete the comeback.

In the final set, Early gave up seven of the first nine points and trailed 14-9 before tallying nine points in a row to open an 18-14 edge. With Portillo serving, Early received two kills from Norris, one from Portillo and a block by Yebra for points, along with Dublin unforced errors.

The Lady Horns (5-4, 0-1) are back in action at noon Saturday as Comanche visits.