After a late surge helped La Salle-Peru take the opening set of Tuesday’s Interstate 8 Conference match at Kingman Gymnasium over Ottawa, the Cavaliers trailed by four early in the second set and prompted coach Mark Haberkorn to take a timeout.

“Sometimes you need to take an early timeout to stop the flow if you feel the other team is gaining momentum,” Haberkorn said. “The timeout was to hopefully do that but also talk about the fact that we weren’t passing well and it was making us struggle offensively. I just felt we needed to regroup and refocus, and the girls did after that.”

Out of the break, La Salle-Peru (21-1, 3-0) used a trio of short scoring spurts, including repeating what it had done in the first by scoring the final five points, to complete a 25-18, 25-18 victory over the Pirates (6-12-2, 0-3).

L-P was led by seven kills apiece from Kelsey Frederick (14 service points, three aces) and Aubrey Duttlinger (two aces), with Anna Riva adding five kills, a block and an ace. Emma Jereb had 14 assists and a trio of aces.

“We understand that we are going to get the best from every opponent we face and especially coming here to Ottawa,” Frederick said. “Ottawa played really well tonight, and we were expecting that.

“We’ve had a number of rollercoaster type matches lately both on the court and mentally. We talked about not having that tonight, but we didn’t quite meet that goal. I did think we did a good job of when we really needed a point or a side out we collectively found a way to get it.”

Ottawa led the opening set 10-8 with aces from Kendall Biba and Bailey Etscheid, plus a trio of kills from Bella Knoll. After the teams see-sawed points a side out kill by Riva, then four-point run by Jereb, with Duttlinger, Frederick and Riva providing kills around an ace, closed the set.

“Our passing was really good tonight which makes it easy to set,” Jereb said. “When passes are on it gives be a better chance to spread the ball around. Kelsey and Aubrey (Duttlinger) were really on with their hitting tonight so I wanted to get them the ball as much as I could and our passing helped me do that.”

The Pirates again started strong in the second set with and from Jordyn Allen, three kills from Knoll and two from Belle Markey helping build a 10-6 advantage.

From there the Cavaliers used a three-point run by Jereb (an ace, back-to-back kills by Frederick), a four-point streak by Riva (an ace, kill from Duttlinger) and a final four-point spurt by Frederick (an ace, two kills by Duttlinger) to finish off the set and match.

Ottawa was led by six kills from Knoll, four from Savanah Markey and three from Belle Markey. Allen finished with a team-high five points, including three aces.

“I thought we played very well tonight,” Ottawa coach Kristina Kore said. “We had so many improvements from our last match. We’ve talked about being more overall consistent in all aspects, but the major talking point was not allowing big serving runs.

“I thought we did a good job with that for the most part. They were able to find ways to get those last few points of each set, but I felt like we made them earn them.”

Both sides are back in action on Thursday in I-8 matches as L-P hosts Rochelle, while Ottawa travels to take on Sycamore.