The Hollis Brookline girls volleyball team celebrates its comeback 3-2 win over Portsmouth in the Division I quarterfinals on Thursday in Hollis. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

HOLLIS – Hell hath no fury than at Hollis Brookline High School girls volleyball team on the brink of elimination.

That’s where the No. 2 Cavaliers found themselves on Thursday, trailing the No. 7 Portsmouth Clippers 2-1 in the best-of-five Divison I quarterfinal match. The Cavs couldn’t lose another set, or their season and chances of getting another crack at tourney favorite Bedford in next weekend’s finals were done.

They didn’t.

The serves had more purpose, the returns more powerful, and the emotions more channeled toward determination. As a result, HB will take on No. 3 Londonderry in next Tuesday’s 5 p.m. semifinals at Pinkerton Academy in Derry.

“We weren’t nervous at all, just have to push through,” Cavaliers senior outside hitter Cheyenne Colbert, who had 31 kills to lead the way, including her 500th career kill, said. “We just had to be HB, who we are. Had to go hard. Our mentality is just very strong.”

The senior feeding Colbert a lot of her kill chances, Sophia Jordan, who had 40-plus assists on the day, agreed.

“We just needed to play hard,” she said. “Be aggressive, get every ball up. Just really focus on playing as a team. When we had a time out, we all said, ‘This is our last home game. Let’s play for our seniors, fight for each other. We really wanted this game more than anything.”

That time out came when the Cavalier 21-11 lead in the fourth set shrunk to 23-21, and the Clippers were thinking they were going to rally to end things there, but fell 25-23.

“I actually thought we were going to sneak that out,” said Portsmouth coach Wayne Siejkowski, who guided Nashua South to a 21-0 state championship season just three years ago. “In the fifth set, I felt if we had started out with serve, things might have been a little different.

“That one serve receive rotation was a little rough, we struggled with it most of the season, and that got them off to a quick start. And mentally we didn’t recover in time.”

That fifth set saw the Cavs jump out to 5-2 and 7-3 leads and they were never really threatened, as the Clippers got no closer than three after it was 5-3 and fell 15-10.

What did Cavaliers coach Becky Balfour see in her players down 2-1?

“Just tenacity,” she said. “This is probably one of the tightest groups that we’ve had, they literally have each other’s backs out on the floor and the same thing off the court.”

And the 17-2 Cavaliers’ experience helped them pull through. Portsmouth (13-7) took a tight first set 25-23 before the Cavs took the second set 25-16. But the Clippers , who were paced by Grace Fabiano, Maddie Maccannel in the middle and setter Eva LaLime, grabbed a very tight third set, 25-23. Things were knotted at 23 before a Margaret Montplaisir drop shot and a Maccannel kill sunk the Cavs.

But not for good. Balfour felt her back line of Anneli DiVirgilio, libero Maia Schneider and Malaya Colena didn’t allow for much to get past them. And then with what she felt were explosive kills by Colbert and Annette Schlunk, the Cavs were on their way.

“We wanted to dial it in a little bit,” Balfour said, adding that hitter Maryfei Berrigan, back from injury, played a role as well. And this will help the Cavs get stronger.

“Definitely stronger,” Balfour said. They understand in the tournament, anything can happen. That’s the best I’ve seen Portsmouth play in a while. They played fantastic.”

But when the chips were down, so did the Cavaliers. On to the semis with an attitude.