On a night where Marquette coach Mindy McConnaughhay felt her team played tentative at times in certain areas, the one facet that wasn’t on that list was hitting.

Led by eight kills from junior hitter Kaitlyn Davis, seven from sophomore setter/outside Kinley Rick and five from junior middle blocker Kelsey Cuchra, the Crusaders evened their overall mark to 5-5 and improved to 2-1 in Tri-County Conference play with a 25-19, 25-19 victory over Lowpoint-Washburn at Bader Gym in Ottawa on Thursday night.

Lowpoint-Washburn fell to 4-7 and 0-3.

“We swung well and hard, and I thought we ran our offense well, but I thought we played a little too cautiously overall,” McConnaughhay said. “We just had a few too many little mistakes that we’ll work on cleaning up before our next match.

“I told the girls before the match that Lowpoint-Washburn is going to dig the ball up. They don’t have a ton of offense or blocking at the net, but they are about as scrappy of a team all over the floor that you’re going to see. Our hitters kept swinging and eventually found open spots.”

Marquette darted out to an 8-1 lead in the opening set, with Cuchra putting down three kills and Rick serving up an ace. The Crusaders led 15-5 after a Davis kill and 16-6 after a winner from Lucy McGrath.

The Wildcats crept back into things, closing to 19-17, but a pair of kills by Davis, one by Rick and one of Carissa Blood’s three aces on the night closed out the set.

“Coach (McConnaughhay) told us that there was going to times in (Lowpoint-Washburn’s) rotation that there weren’t going to be blockers with shorter players up front, and the net would be open,” Davis said. “We wanted to take advantage of that as much as we could.

“For me, knowing that there probably wasn’t going to be someone there to block me gave me even more confidence. I just went up for every hit trying to make sure I stayed within myself.”

A four-point service run by Blood, aided by a pair of aces and kills from Rick and Hailey Abbott, pushed the hosts out to an 11-6 advantage in the second set.

L-W would again hang close, trailing just 18-16, but a sideout kill by Davis and three consecutive hitting errors by the visitors had the Cru ahead 22-16.

Marquette closed out the match with kills from Rick and Cuchra.

Rick also passed for 16 assists. Jakobi Reed added 10.

“I feel like our team has hitters that are all very equal and very capable of getting us points,” Rick said. “But like tonight with Kaitlyn, when someone gets hot, you want to try to get them the ball as much as possible. That said, as a setter you also have to adjust. If the other team is trying to stop a certain spot or player, you have to go to other options.

“As a hitter I want the ball every time. But I also understand that as a setter you have to spread the ball around much of the time to be successful and keep the defense guessing.”

McConnaughhay said it was great to see her team follow through with the things they had talked about that would be keys before the match.

“We knew where we wanted to attack tonight, and I thought we did a great job of executing the game plan,” McConnaughhay said. “Kaitlyn and Kinley had really good nights at the net, as did Kelsey.

“It wasn’t the best we can play, but overall it was a really solid effort and hopefully a start to a nice run for us.”

Marquette is off until Monday when it hosts Indian Creek, then travels to Granville on Thursday for a TCC matchup with Putnam County.