Boys volleyball: No. 1-ranked Lake Park rolls past Naperville North
This boys volleyball season Lake Park senior libero Tommy Samaras serves from as near to the far sideline extended as legally possible.
"I adapted in club season this year (with Pipeline) and now I feel it's most effective." Samaras said. "It's all the way down. Your foot needs to be in the (extended) court. It's so close."
It's among the few close calls the Lancers have had so far.
On Tuesday they continued their march toward perhaps the greatest season in program history by beating Naperville North 25-14, 25-15 in DuPage Valley Conference play in Roselle.
Lake Park (27-1, 3-0), the Daily Herald's No. 1-ranked team, overcame 7-2 and 8-4 deficits in the first game and defeated the Huskies (10-20, 1-2) for the third time this season.
Senior Jack Fischer and junior Jordan Haigh each had 7 kills and junior Nick Martinski had 5. Senior setter Justin Yost had 22 assists, 4 blocks and 7 digs and Samaras had 10 digs.
Naperville North senior Nick Beck had 6 kills, senior Jacob Triplett 8 assists and senior Connor Sheehan 11 digs.
On April 8 the Lancers outlasted two-time defending state champion Glenbard West 25-23, 17-25, 25-22 for the championship of Glenbard East's Autumnfest tournament.
The past two seasons the Lancers lost in the state quarterfinals to Glenbard West following a program-best, fourth-place state finish and 33-8 record in 2014.
"Yes, it stinks, but those two years make us think even harder how we want to beat them (in the state tournament)," Fischer said. "Once we serve receive well, there's not many teams that can stop us. We have all of our options to go to. Basically if we play hard, I think we're a team that's not going to be stopped."
The Lancers also have won Wheaton Warrenville South's Tiger Classic and the Lincoln-Way East Invite last Saturday. They finished second at the Downers Grove South Invite, losing to New Trier in a three-game final.
"Our expectations are very high," Samaras said. "Basically the big picture is state, and each game is a building block towards state."
Tuesday's victory featured offensive balance with a blistering quick-set middle attack. They also had 6 blocks for points and key serving streaks by Samaras and Fischer.
"(Balance) is part of our offense. We want to be unpredictable," Lake Park coach Tim Murphy said. "We don't have the biggest or strongest middles, but the speed coupled with the size that we have make it very tough to defend. We transition well and just try to get there quick."
The Huskies were the ones who came out quickly with some scouting help from previous meetings at WW South and Downers South.
That led Murphy to call a timeout at 7-2. By 8-4 the Huskies had 5 kills, 4 by Beck, with just one attack error. They finished with 13 kills and 15 attack errors.
"(Murphy) made some nice adjustments with their guys. I think that our guys didn't adjust as much as we wanted," Naperville North coach Nate Bornancin said.
"Their serving kept us out of system quite a bit. Because we were out of system, we weren't running our middles and they could camp out on our pin attackers. They were able to shut us down because of their serve."
Samaras had 6 of his 8 service points in opening a 22-13 lead in the first game. The jump-serving Murphy had 2 aces during four points in the second game that put Lake Park ahead 10-5.
"With us, we never give up basically. We're always staying up and that's the key to our success right now," Samaras said.
"Jack is one of our most aggressive servers," Murphy added. "When Tommy serves, we have one of our better front rows so we're able to score in that fashion by blocking and running our offense."