Boys water polo: Casey, Hersey surge past Rolling Meadows
The king spread the wealth around Wednesday.
Hersey's Jack Casey, who became the leading boys water polo goal scorer in school history last Saturday, scored 2 goals to help lead the Huskies past Rolling Meadows 12-2 at Elk Grove.
Casey, who now has 240 goals for his career including 85 this season, said that it is important to make sure he is just not the only offensive focus for his team.
"We need lots of people who can score," said Casey, who will play club water polo at the University of Illinois next season
"We need balance out there to be successful. My scoring is the result of my teammates. They get me the ball when I am open and if not, they work to get good shots and goals."
Hersey coach Marc Popovici said his team is working different plays to use Casey as a decoy.
"The big thing is that everyone knows we are going to go to Casey," Popovici said. "They are expecting him to get the ball. Now we can get the ball to everybody else and let Casey be the distraction."
That theory worked quite well Wednesday. Casey played just about 10 minutes of the game and the Huskies got plenty of opportunity to work with and without him.
"I thought we did the things we needed to do and really got a lot of guys a chance to play, including our bench mafia," Popovici said. "We have to be ready in case something happens."
Things happened quite well for Hersey (12-6, 5-1) which, with win, stayed a game behind Buffalo Grove in the Mid-Suburban East standings.
The Huskies tallied their first 3 goals without Casey scoring any of them as they took a 3-0 lead after the first period. Hersey broke the game open with a 5-goal barrage in the second period to make it 8-0 at the half. Misha Nikiforov had 3 of those goals.
"We have been working on driving with some new plays," Nikiforov said. "We have been trying to space out the pool and run some more drives. We know that teams are going to be focusing in on Casey, so we have work on moving the ball on the outside and with our shots."
Jack Blumenfled scored twice for Hersey while Andi Contanu, Spencer Burkhalter, Eddie Curtis, Nate Loch, Carter Cosley and Paul Jacks also tallied for the Huskies.
Marty Davis had both goals for Rolling Meadows (0-9, 0-6).
Buffalo Grove 9, Elk Grove 3: The Bison (12-4, 6-0) remained a game in front of Hersey in the MSL East as Andy Gotko scored 5 times, Carlos Salgado had 3 goals and Michael Goudine also tallied. Brandon Newman had 7 saves and Luke Naughton 5 for BG. Paolo Losacco had 2 goals for Elk Grove (9-11, 3-3) and Christian Tchilikov also scored for the Grens.
"We got the job done," Buffalo Grove coach Scott Kopecky said. "We got a win. Now it's just keeping ourselves ready for our game for Hersey."