WW South prepared for quarterfinal foe
In retrospect Wheaton Warrenville South may have been a little lucky in having St. Francis as an opponent in last Tuesday's Glenbard East boys volleyball sectional final.
Though the Spartans gave the Tigers a stiff test, their style and system turned out to be the perfect preparation for Wheaton Warrenville South for Friday's state quarterfinal match against Morton.
The three-time defending champion Tigers handled the quick and tenacious Mustangs 25-17, 25-21 to move to today's semifinal match against Minooka.
"Morton runs the same kind of quick offense that St. Francis runs," said Wheaton Warrenville South coach Bill Schreier. "When you're able to do what we did Tuesday, that kind of carries over."
"Morton is a great team," said WW South setter Eric Wilkins. "They run a quick offense. No. 9 (Alfonso Pereda) is great. They spread out the ball, but we took care of business. Our defense is getting better."
Morton coach Tony Hornilla sees the similarities and the differences between his team and the Spartans.
"They're quick like us and they're very athletic," Hornilla said. "We do a lot of combinations and crossing patterns. But they're taller than us. We faced them in the Benet tournament and lost.
"Today we didn't run our kind of offense or tempo. That had a lot to do with our passing being a little bit off. We got caught up in playing their style of volleyball instead of ours."
The first game on Friday was a seesaw affair early with many ties and several lead changes until the Tigers' Matt Nussbaum tipped the ball over the net for a kill to make it 12-11.
WW South (34-6) then increased the lead to 16-13 in an error-filled patch that the Mustangs (24-11) committed 4 errors to the Tigers' 2.
Eric Luhrsen, the Tigers' leader with 9 kills for the match, had 3 down the stretch to seal Game 1.
Game 2 followed a similar pattern early, but this time the Mustangs held out until 17-17 before giving up the lead for good.
Again, Luhrsen came up big in the clutch with 4 kills and a block in the final 8 points.
"Luhrsen gives our offense such a varied dimension because he can hit sets from so many different heights," Schreier said. "He's a nice bailout situation when we're out of system. He can hit out of the back row. We have a good complement of hitters, but everyone knows he's going to get his swings, so that opens up avenues for a lot of other guys."
Among the avenues that opened up were Matt Wilkins on the right side with 6 kills and a block, and Nussbaum in the middle who chipped in 4 kills and 3 blocks.
"After going to Luhrsen three times in a row we went to Matt Wilkins who was free because they were so concerned about getting a double block on Luhrsen," Schreier said. "Matt (Wilkins) and the middles do a great job of keeping the pressure on. When you spread out their block pin to pin, that makes it hard for them to get a double block."
Pereda led the Mustangs with 6 kills and a block.
"I thought the match would go to three games like the match at Richards," Hornilla said. "That was a much closer match."