It happens in almost every volleyball match.
An opponent goes on a point-scoring run, and their momentum can be tough to break.
Head coach Deb Zellers called a second timeout with her team down 13-6 in the second set of Tuesday's match against Ohio Wesleyan University at the Neal Fieldhouse. It wasn't that the Battling Bishops were playing at a high level. It was, as Zellers described, because her team wasn't executing its hits as well as they should.
She brought her team together on the sideline, kneeled down in the center of the cabal and spoke to them with a calm voice.
They responded.
Led by powerful hits down the middle from sophomore Mary Kate Etling, the Tigers slowly clawed back and tied the game at 21. DePauw won the set 25-21 on its way to a three-set victory, and its 16th straight win on the season - surpassing the second-longest win streak in program history.
This winning streak caught many by surprise - not just Zellers or any upperclassmen who saw this team's untapped potential for the past three seasons. What DePauw players, coaches and fans are seeing on the court today is the product of an evaluation process Zellers - now in her 19th season at DePauw - and her team put itself through following the conclusion of the 2011 season. The result of the process, according to Zellers and players, is an improved attitude, accountability and team cohesion not seen just in the previous three seasons, but as many as six or seven seasons.
And it started with Zellers' willingness to take some heat.
"If there's one thing I had to have during this process it's definitely courage," Zellers said. "When you care so deeply about something and you want it to go well and you put so much into it, the last thing you want to hear is you're not doing well."
She heard it, and she's reaping the benefits.
Good... But not great
The 2011 season ended with a 21-12 record. While the team scratched off another winning record, it wasn't satisfied with yet again being a team fighting to be on top.
The Tigers' last losing season came in 2004 when DePauw went 16-17, and Zellers currently sports a winning percentage of more than 65.
But it's been nothing but a struggle to, as Zeller put it, "become great."
Especially last year, with five senior starters, she thought that could be a break-through year.
"It wasn't a bad season, but it was very much like the six or seven seasons we had prior," Zellers said. "For a number of years in a row, every team ahead of us in our conference has gone to the national tournament, but we have not."
At the conclusion, Zellers instigated an evaluation of every aspect of her program. She "opened the book" to be graded on everything from off-season practices, pre-game preparation and basic player-coach communication.
"I think it comes back to the desire to be better than just good," she said. "This is not an easy thing to do or to acknowledge. ... This was going to start with my ability to enable our entire team to look at it."
She created an eight-page document of aspects for her seven returning players to critique. She handed the document to them in December, and then they turned their answers back after Winter Term.
"It was literally a 20-page document," she said. "It's sort of scary to put yourself out there like that."
The results, as Zellers described, weren't all negative. There were many positives to reinforce the team was still headed in a positive direction. But there was another area that served as a bit of a wake-up call.
"I needed to listen more," she said. "I always thought of myself as a good listener, but I don't think my past teams saw me in that framework.
"The teams I coach today have different needs than the ones I coached in the past. Today, the players I coach need to be a part of everything we're doing. They want to have a say. The more I listen and allow them to have a say, the harder they work for me."
Open lines of communication
For junior Tori Bowerman and senior Katie Petrovich, the evaluation served as a method to finally express ideas that were on their minds.
"It opened up that line of communication that we all didn't believe that was there before," Bowerman said. "She didn't know our thoughts, and we didn't know her thoughts."
When spring practices took place in March and April, just seven players remained as five seniors graduated. After each practice, Zellers said she and her players sat down for 20 minutes and discussed what needed to be changed from the results of the evaluation.
"One of those things was we needed to stress team chemistry as a whole," Zellers said.
Added Petrovich, "I was brutally honest. If there was something I didn't like, I told her straight up. Before the freshmen got here, we came up with what we wanted from this season."
What Bowerman and Petrovich wanted was what Zellers was primarily concerned with: creating team chemistry with what they knew would be an almost completely new team.
"There has always been this division between the seniors and the rest of the team," Petrovich said. "They led what was going on and everyone else followed."
So they came up with an upperclassmen buddy system where one of the returning players paired up with an incoming freshman to communicate with during the summer and answer any questions that may come up. They also created a team Facebook page to remain in constant contact.
With a better line of open communication with players and coaches, more responsibility and ownership took place from the returning players' end.
"A lot of it comes from us, upperclassmen, talking about it," Petrovich said. "We all are on the same page now."
A new intensity
On the court, Bowerman and Petrovich both said what needed to change was intensity and competition in practice.
Now, thanks to what Zellers and players have said is because of new assistant coach Lauren Torvi, the team moves quickly between drills. There are also new practices Torvi has introduced to the team.
Torvi is a 2011 graduate of Springfield College, and was on the American Volleyball Coaches Association Div. III first-team All-America squad, leading her team to the NCAA Div. III quarter finals.
"The program she's coming from represents a lot of what I am as a coach," Zellers said, "She definitely has a team-first mentality, open communication, always thinking of teammates - so some of that chemistry we were striving for. I thought she could be a tipping point factor for the season."
While the coaching staff underwent a moderate transformation, it was an increased sense of ownership of the team that can attribute to this season's success.
She and Bowerman's leadership is what Zellers is looking for.
"But if you want to a championship team, you want to have championship-level accountability," Zellers said. "You also have to have championship level leadership."
The leadership and accountability has translated to more effort and discipline during matches. Now, because of more intensity and increased competition in practice, players are in the right places defensively and better communication on the court is taking place.
"We are doing those things so much better," Zellers said. "Our team chemistry is so fantastic. I think we've really focused one game at a time instead of thinking of any big picture at all."
"We're not setting a ceiling"
In the midst of this 16-game win streak, there is one point which Zellers and players both agree on for a realization of their potential.
They all point to their third game of the season against Cornell College. Before its Sept. 2 matchup, the team dropped its first two games of the season to national-caliber competitors at Dominican University and Washington University in St. Louis.
Even before that, on a bus ride to Washington, the team wondered who they were.
"We sort of had a sense of urgency in our practices to make sure we were doing the right things," Zellers said. "That urgency put a lot of pressure on our players."
DePauw went 1-3 during the scrimmage weekend, and then fell to 0-2 on the first day of the regular season. It was against Cornell - a five set win for the Tigers - that finally gave them some confidence.
The win over Cornell was indeed a catalyst for success, as the team won 24-straight sets in the span of nine games.
Winning 16-straight games seemed improbable at the start of the season with the influx of freshmen and the possibility of an entire new starting lineup.
"As a coach I saw the possibility of anything happening," Zellers said. "I certainly knew that if we didn't work hard, it could be a long season. But our preparation was for that not to happen. It's exciting to see it's worked."
To predict what this team is capable of is something Zellers will not do. She said what's gotten the team to this point is the philosophy of not defining what the team's overall goals are, but focusing on practice one day at a time.
"The most rewarding moments as a coach come from the hard work that you see your players put in," she said. "I'm very proud of them. They probably don't realize how proud of them I am, especially these returning players, for all that they've invested."