“We knew coming into the tournament that we were the definite underdogs in this scenario,” commented Head Coach Jamie Lill of the Otters.  “We spent the week preparing for this match by showing the girls a lot more pace and spin than they are accustomed to seeing and really working on beefing up our serves.  The match started very fast for Mia and Ashtyn as Tarrolly came out serving lasers that we just didn't return in the first game.  In the second game, Tarrolly and Marohl flexed their return game muscles as well and demonstrated just how consistent and clean their game was against Mia's serves.  Our girls really settled in nicely in the third game though.  We seemed to be able to handle the pace a bit better and kind of settle into the match.  Although we didn't win that third game, we had a couple of game points on Marohl's serve and the girls gained the confidence they needed to know they could hit with these girls and we didn't need to fear their pace.  We found ourselves down 0-3 at the first coaching change over.  Mia and Ashtyn were calm, said they really felt good about the last game and were confident they could go out and hold Ashtyn's serve.  They knew they needed to be a bit cleaner in their groundies to keep Tech from poaching easily at the net and that they just needed to hit out.  And that is exactly what they did.  Ashtyn placed some nice first serves up the T and Mia got some finishes at the net, which was our best placement for this duo today.  The games continued to be tighter after we won Ashtyn's service game, but St. Cloud took the first set 6-1.  Mia and Ashtyn were not going to roll over though.  The girls and I talked at set break about utilizing the alleys more and dialing in on the importance of each point, and they did just that.  Ashtyn held serve again to start the set and we got an early break on Tarrolly to give us a 2-0 lead, and a boost of confidence.  Each game from here on out was a dog-fight.  We found ourselves down 3-5 with Ashtyn serving at love-40, so the girls were facing three consecutive match points.  The girls dug in, battled back, and showed their determination and eventually won that game after fighting off a total of five match points.  In the end, Tech was just too tough and served it out for a 6-4 second set victory.  Our 5 games won against this top-seeded duo was as many as anybody has taken off them so far this year, so the girls and I were very happy with their performance today.”