Stevenson tough in the clutch in win over Warren

There was not much room for error for the Stevenson boys volleyball team Tuesday night at Warren.

But when all was said and done, the No. 10-seeded Patriots escaped with a 25-22, 26-24 victory over the No. 8 Blue Devils in the semifinals of the Warren regional.

Stevenson (24-12) will meet No. 2 Mundelein for the regional title today at 7 p.m. The Mustangs rolled past No. 18 St. Viator 25-8, 25-13 in their semifinal match.

Warren (19-16) had many opportunities to win both games, but the Patriots came up big down the stretch to pull out the victory.

In Game 1, the Blue Devils led 22-21 before a miscue tied the score at 22-22 and gave the serve to Patriots senior John Baader.

Baader's first serve barely crawled over the net, but it went for an ace and a 23-22 Pats lead.

A spike by 6-foot-8 junior Niki Antonijevic (5 kills) made the score 24-22 before the Pats won game point when the referee ruled that a Warren player hit the ball off the antenna on the net.

In the second game, the Blue Devils held their biggest lead at 20-16 before the Pats chipped away to cut the gap to 21-19 when it was ruled that Warren hit the ball four times.

The Patriots eventually tied the game 23-23 on a huge block by junior Danny Gescheidle before senior teammate Travis Naftzger also came up with a huge block to give Stevenson a 24-23 lead.

Then with the Patriots leading 25-24 and the match on the line, the Blue Devils were unable to track down a high set near their own net - and Stevenson pulled out a 26-24 win.

"Once you get a hit the whole team gets fired up and our coach (Tim Crow) always tells us to stay at the net and keep our hands high," Gescheidle said. "We had some big kills that really brought our team together."

Baader led the Pats with 7 kills, while Gescheidle chipped in 5 kills. Warren was led by Eduard Ciobanu with 11 kills, while teammate Kyle Schwede had 6 kills.

"It all came down to errors and they had more errors than us," said Crow, whose team lost to Mundelein twice in the regular season. "I told them in the huddle that we had to start getting some blocks and we made some huge blocks in the end that gave us a 1-point lead."

Schwede recorded 22 assists for Warren, while Zachary Kravits had 18 assists for the Pats.

"We stressed competing and being aggressive and we did that all match," said Warren coach Yun Chen. "Stevenson played tough, they competed the best when they needed to and they pulled it out."