Boys volleyball: Neuqua Valley denies WW South a milestone win
Wheaton Warrenville South coach Bill Schreier will have to wait another day.
Neuqua Valley denied the state's winningest boys volleyball coach his 600th win Tuesday, defeating the visiting Tigers 25-22, 25-20 behind 16 assists from 6-foot-7 sophomore setter Kevin Kauling and 7 kills from junior outside hitter Jeremy Grove.
The win kept Neuqua Valley (17-6, 3-1) one game behind unbeaten Lake Park in the DuPage Valley Conference race.
"We were really close to beating back-to-back state champion Glenbard West (a 30-28, 32-30 loss Saturday at the Benet invite), and I feel like we've been on a really good run," Kauling said. "Our serve receive has been really aggressive. We've been really attacking it.
"We finally figured out how to run the offense, and we have so much emotional momentum," he added. "It's been flowing really well."
WW South (16-15, 2-2) grabbed a brief 12-10 lead in Game 1 on a block by setter Alex Carr, but the Wildcats answered with a 7-1 run behind a kill and 2 blocks from 6-3 rightside hitter Austin O'Malley.
"The key there was we just have to play a simple game," Kauling said. "We're a serve-receive team, and when we're aggressive on serve-receive and play a simple game we can just run everything. We can run the offense efficiently, and when we run the offense efficiently we're really successful."
Handling the bulk of Neuqua Valley's service reception were alternating liberos Brett Kliegl and Francisco Comas.
"They're both very successful," Kauling said. "Even if they don't play (libero), they're still playing defensive specialist. They played really good defense and they're great serve-receive passers, and that's always a key. They both do the job and that's exactly what we need."
After trailing 12-7 in Game 2, WW South closed to within 17-16 on a kill by Luke Robbins and another Carr block. But that was as close as the Tigers could get.
Neuqua Valley closed the match on a block by 6-6 sophomore middle Jeremy Cardenas.
"We couldn't get over the hump tonight," said Schreier, who is 599-132 with seven state titles in 19 seasons at WW South. "We had too many missed serves and too many serve-receive errors. We're looking at probably 35 to 40 unforced errors. It's frustrating because we had not done that previously.
"We kept them in the first set," he added. "It becomes a whole different situation if we cut down those errors. But things happen. We need to be better. We need to be cleaner."
Josh Alexander and O'Malley each had 5 kills for Neuqua Valley. WW South was led by Dan Higley with 8 kills and Robbins with 7 kills and 7 digs.