The Lady Cavs (17-3, 0-0) keep rolling, with very few hiccups along the way.

Lake Travis topped McNeil last Tuesday, 25-15, 22-25, 25-13, 26-24, despite playing far from their best game of the season.

“It was our first home game, and we did not play well, I was disappointed in our play,” Lake Travis head coach Julie Green said. “Because at this point in our season, we are working every game to get better, and I don’t think we got better. I don’t think we played to our potential. Win or lose, we have to improve.”

Amy Neal led the Lady Cavaliers with 14 kills and three aces. Lani Durio had 25 assists, Mackenzie Mayo had 24 digs and Morgan Hendrix had three aces and two blocks.

While Green was happy with the win, she saw some lapses that the team will need to avoid if it plans to return to the final four again this year.

“We let hits just sit right over our blocks. We weren’t particularly aggressive on balls that night, either,” Green said. “Offensively, we weren’t mixing our shots up well. We were hitting cross-court to their libero, and they had a good libero, so that was giving us trouble. There wasn’t as much communication about what was open on the court as I would have liked, and we addressed it.”

But as with any struggle early in the season, silver linings were easy to find.

“It did give us good things to work out of, like getting through slumps and inconsistency and it was a good lesson in pushing our level of intensity,” Green said.

Lake Travis bounced back exactly the way Green hoped it would Friday against Hays, dominating the Lady Rebels, 25-13, 25-13, 25-11.

Neal again led the Lady Cavs with 13 kills, while Hendrix had eight. Katy Beals chipped in five aces and four blocks, Cassie Wang had 11 assists, Mayo had 10 digs and Taylor Smith had four blocks.

“Hays is a good team, for sure. They always are,” Green said. “But I would hope part of our dominance that night was our girls refocusing and preparing for each game. Learning from Tuesday night to come out more prepared and more intense. We focused on the things we didn’t do particularly well against McNeil and we fixed those things, and it really was a strong performance.”

Lake Travis plays in the Hays tournament starting this morning at 8 a.m. and plays through the afternoon before returning Saturday for the second part of the tournament. The Lady Cavs will square off against Leander away Friday night at 6:30 p.m. in a non-tournament game. The Lady Lions have been ranked ahead of Lake Travis in Central Texas to start the season, despite the Lady Cavaliers beating them once already in tournament play.

Lake Travis has finished second in its two previous tournaments this year, and is out to get the championship trophy that has eluded it thus far.

“I look at every game and think we can win it. But one of our goals coming into the season was to win a tournament, and we haven’t done that,” Green said. “I’m excited, though, because I haven’t been disappointed in our play at all this year in tournaments and I think we’ll do well.”