Boys volleyball: Serving serves Vernon Hills against Warren

It seemed appropriate that an ace ended Tuesday's volleyball match between Warren and visiting Vernon Hills.

Serving and aces are what saved Vernon Hills, which lost the first set and was down 18-9 in the second set.

Matt Kushnir served the last two points for Vernon Hills and ended with an ace, giving the Cougars a 17-25, 25-22, 25-18 comeback win over Warren.

The victory keeps Vernon Hills tied for second place in the North Suburban Conference with Lake Zurich. Each team is 6-1 in league play. Vernon Hills improves to 12-8 overall after starting the season 2-5.

Warren drops to 12-13 and 4-2 in the conference.

"Serving was a big part of this today," Vernon Hills coach Chris Curry said. "Serving has been a strength of ours. Kushnir actually leads the team in aces and no one would think it because his serve is low and he just kind of slaps it and it kind of floats. But it's really hard to judge the spin.

"We've got a mixture of that and power (with jump server Jared Bennett). And then Jake Adkisson comes in with a low serve and Johnny (McDonald) is jumping, too. That's what we're going for: a mixture of serves to keep the other team off-balance."

Warren seemed perfectly in balance for most of the match, in control with that 18-9 lead in the second set.

But that's when Bennett, a.k.a. Mr. Cannon-For-An-Arm, went on a serving binge for Vernon Hills. Bennett, who has a wicked-hard jump serve, rolled up six straight points. Many of his serves were so hard and low that even the ones Warren successfully got a hand on caused total disruption, and often resulted in a free ball back over the net.

Bennett cut Vernon Hills' deficit to 2 points.

After a side out and a couple of Warren points, Jake Adkisson went to work for Vernon Hills with his serve. Tricky and low over the net, Adkisson's serve had such spin on the ball that it left the Blue Devils' heads spinning.

Adkisson served seven straight points to put Vernon Hills in a game-point situation at 24-20. The Cougars eventually closed out the game on a McDonald kill.

Kushnir and Bennett each had big serving games in the third set as well.

For the match, Adkisson went 13-for-13 on his serves with 3 aces while Bennett was 13-for-15 with 3 aces and McDonald was 9-of-10.

"It's a pattern on this team. When we serve well and consistent and hard, that's when things come for this team. That's when we get clicking," Bennett said. "We have a lot of diverse servers. And people are always trying new serves like jump serves and floaters and jump floats. We just switch it up.

"Mine, I just try to hit it as hard as I can and hope for the best."

Bennett actually isn't that random. He does put some thought into his velocity, thanks to helpful reminders from the bench. His teammates will recite, "80 percent, 80 percent" when Bennett serves because the power of his serve at 80 percent is more than hard enough. Sometimes his power at 100 percent can be a little too much.

"Every single time when I hear 80 percent, it's a nice reminder to just try to keep it under control," Bennett said. "It shows me that my teammates care and are cheering me on."

Bennett also led Vernon Hills in kills with 11. McDonald had 6 kills and Chris Winter had 4 kills and no errors. McDonald and sophomore Drake Deboer led the defense with 7 digs each and setter Jake Fiarito had 24 assists.

For Warren, middle hitter Mihajlo Gomez had 4 kills, 3 aces and 3 blocks and was successful with some quick sets out of the middle.

"I think we got a little cocky," Gomez said. "We thought we had it in the bag (after winning the first set and getting a big lead in the second set). We kind of dropped our level of intensity.

"We needed more sense of urgency when they started coming back. I think we just got nervous with our passing on the serves (by Vernon Hills). Our passing wasn't there today."

The Blue Devils did dig up Vernon Hills' hits pretty well though. Matt Daniel had 13 digs while Zach Schultz, Danny Johnson and Aaron Wagan each had 9 digs.

Schultz and Johnson also had 5 kills each while Wagan had 9 assists.

"The serve receive is something we struggle with sometimes," Warren coach Yun Chen said. "We kind of started falling apart on serve receive. We just got too comfortable with where we were at. We didn't have a finish mentality. We let them back in and they served tough and we struggled a lot."