On Saturday, the Tigers found their new groove and looked particularly comfortable in it.

MCC scored a pair of three-set sweeps in its home triangular, taking down the Central College junior varsity and Southeast Community College (Beatrice, Neb.) in a trial run for the new-look Tiger lineup.

With only one day to practice its new schemes, the MCC volleyball team (28-4) got better as the day wore on and wore down its competition in convincing fashion. The Tigers swept the Central JV 25-20, 25-20, 25-21, and then hammered Southeast, 25-10, 25-11, 25-18, to round out the triangular at the Student Activity Center.

“Honestly today I had no idea what to expect,” MCC head coach Justin Hoskins said of his squad. “We just put in a new lineup yesterday at practice because we’re dealing with some injuries right now, so I’m really glad we were able to get an opportunity to come out and play two matches before a big conference match on Tuesday.

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE

“I think that’s the biggest thing we got out of tonight was being able to get some confidence with our new system and seeing that even though what we’re doing now may be a little bit unconventional, if we really buy into it we’ll still be able to compete with the teams we need to compete with.”

Four days removed from a 25-15, 25-14, 25-8 loss to No. 2 Iowa Western, the Tigers rolled out their new scheme and ran with it. South Tama County graduate Sadie Smith, a freshman outside hitter for MCC, tallied team-highs of 12 kills and four service aces in the victory over Central, while freshman right-side hitter Marija Egic had 11 kills and four of Marshalltown’s 16 aces in the dominant sweep of Southeast.

“Tuesday was a tough loss [at Iowa Western], it was the worst game we’ve played,” said Smith. “Coach threw us in a room and said ‘figure out your problems.’ We watched the film, talked about getting rid of our attitudes and coming together as a team, trust each other. There’s a lot of things we changed and we bounced back.”

The Tigers posted a hitting efficiency of .204 against Central and .403 against Southeast, and the nation’s frontrunner in aces added 27 more to their tally for the day. MCC leads the country in service aces by 42 more than the next closest school.

Aggressive serving is a risk-reward ratio that Hoskins is OK with losing percentage-wise as long as his team is getting the aces to go with it. Taking the opposition out of system is worth the increased potential for missing serves, and on Saturday it yielded the Tigers 27 points in ace serves (and 26 service errors).

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE

It helped MCC offset its slow start in its new alignment, but Hoskins still gave his team a “7 out of 10” for the day.

“It was very rough to begin with (Friday),” he said. “It’s just different from what any of them had done in their previous volleyball experience, so it’s one of those things where we needed to trust each other and see what it looks like in an actual live game situation and hopefully grow in our confidence from there.

“We definitely had some areas we were thinking about things still, but as the day went on I feel like they were more fluid and let themselves relax and play volleyball.”

It appeared to come to fruition against Southeast in the nightcap, as MCC scored the first six points of the match and moved quickly through the Storm for a 25-10 win in the first set. Egic had two aces in the opening surge, and a pair of 4-0 runs helped to provide the final margin.

The Tigers remained the aggressor in the second set and got out to a 10-4 lead that Southeast slowly chiseled down to 15-10, but an 8-0 run served up by freshman outside hitter Elena Yee ballooned MCC’s lead to 23-10. Her service error ended the surge, but the Tigers got a quick sideout with a kill by freshman middle hitter Chiara Mottola, and Egic ended the set with an attack from the back row.

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE

Yee had three of her four aces in the match during that eight-point push for the Tigers, while Mottola had two kills. Smith added another and sophomore setter Jelena Dukic finished off an errant serve-receive by the Storm for the 25-11 set victory.

Southeast countered by scoring the first three points of the third set and was still tied with the Tigers at 8-all before MCC regained control. Dukic served up four in a row with an ace and three points for Egic (two kills, one solo block), and Marshalltown slowly pulled away to complete the sweep, 25-18.

“We had a hurt player go down so we played without a middle [hitter], and we only practiced it last night,” said Smith. “It’s all new to us so that kind of got us excited for a challenge.”

MCC scored 16 aces against Southeast, with four each for Yee, Egic and freshman libero Halee Pedro, and Dukic had three. Egic led with 11 kills, Mottola tallied 10, Yee and Smith had seven apiece and Dukic even racked up six.

Yee led the defense with 12 digs and Pedro added 11, while Egic had three blocks and Mottola one. Fauneil Olander contributed seven digs and Raquel Gonzales tallied five digs and a service ace.

In the sweep of Central, Smith led with 12 kills and four aces, while Yee and Egic had eight kills apiece and Mottola added seven. Pedro posted 12 digs, Egic added 11 and Dukic finished with 10. Mottola’s two blocks led the way at the net.

The Tigers return to their home court on Tuesday for their final Iowa Community College Athletic Conference match, hosting Indian Hills in a 7 p.m. match. The Warriors won the first meeting in straight sets, 25-20, 27-25, 25-21.

“We have to beat them to guarantee we get into the playoffs,” said Smith.