COFFEYVILLE – The Neosho County Community College volleyball team battled inconsistency all night in a 3-0 (25-22, 25-21 and 25-18) sweep at the hands of the Coffeyville Community College Ravens Wednesday night.
"We played really flat (Wednesday)," Coach Asya Herron said. "We would have four or five points that were great and executed perfectly, and then we had 10 where we couldn't put three contacts together."
In the first set, Coffeyville scored the first two points, but it didn't take long for the visitors to pull back even.
Sophomore Riley McGinn recorded one of her two blocks to tie the game at three, and the Panthers eventually took a brief lead at 10-9 following an attack error by the Ravens.
Coffeyville scored the next four points and never surrendered the lead again in the set.
The second set was much of the same story. It was close in the early going until a Ravens went on a  5-1 spurt in the middle stages of the set to take control of the set.
"Coffeyville is a good team, and you aren't going to beat top 20 teams that way," Herron said.
Neosho County made a late push behind a pair of kills by sophomore Mackenzie Brown.
The Panthers trimmed the deficit to one at 22-21, but Coffeyville scored the final three points of the match.
In the deciding set, the visitors jumped out to a 10-6 advantage, forcing the Ravens to call a quick timeout. Coffeyville responded with a 7-2 run to take the lead for good at 14-12.
"Their outside hitter was an (NCAA) Division I transfer, but we just didn't do the little things that we had been doing all season and winning games for us," Herron said. "We didn't block well. We are used to getting hit at, but we didn't have a ton of energy. We really couldn't get everyone on the same page all at the same time."
Brown led the Panthers with nine kills, while sophomore Jill Starling added seven and freshman Rianne Richard six. Starling tallied a team-high 15 assists.
Defensively, freshman libero Taryn Strobel recorded 18 digs, while the Panthers as a team had only five blocks – two by McGinn and Starling and one by Richard.
Neosho County now turn its attention to the Norse Invite. The Panthers will see conference-foe Allen County and Texas school North Lake College on Friday. The next day, Neosho County will match up against Southeast (Neb.) Community College and host Northeastern Oklahoma A&M.
"All four of our games are going to be battles," Herron concluded. "There are no weak teams at this tournament."
Action gets underway at 2 pm Friday in Miami, Okla.