Chargers trip up Pats

Posted 4/17/14

Last week, the Pilgrim volleyball team pushed South Kingstown to five games, picked up its first league win with a sweep of Exeter/West Greenwich and made a run to the championship match against …

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Chargers trip up Pats

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Last week, the Pilgrim volleyball team pushed South Kingstown to five games, picked up its first league win with a sweep of Exeter/West Greenwich and made a run to the championship match against strong competition in the Little Rhody Invitational.

The upward trend hit an abrupt road block Tuesday.

With top hitter Rob Quaine out because of a back injury, the Patriots couldn’t get much of anything going in a home match with Chariho. Instead of competing for a key early win in the Division I-South race, Pilgrim was swept 25-15, 25-23 and 25-7 by the Chargers.

“Rob’s been arguably our best player to this point, but our team needs to realize, when someone’s out, it doesn’t matter,” said Pilgrim head coach Mike McGiveron. “I have a young team so they’re not used to this kind of situation, but it’s still no excuse to not pass the ball, not do the disciplined things you need to do to win volleyball games. If you don’t pass the ball, it can get really ugly and that’s what happened tonight.”

Pilgrim dropped to 1-4 in league play, with all of its losses coming against teams that are now ahead of it in the Division I-South standings. Chariho came in with the same 1-3 record as Pilgrim – and the same exact resume – but now has a leg up in the race for one of the four playoff spots from I-South. Pilgrim is now in fifth place.

“We’ve got to start taking some of these matches,” McGiveron said. “We’ve got to steal some and definitely go down there and take it from them if we want to get to the playoffs.”

Quaine’s absence had the Pats looking out of sorts from the start – and the Chargers handled the rest. Zach Wilcox and Robbie Toth had 11 kills each as Chariho dominated at the net.

“Hats off to them,” McGiveron said. “They played a great match. They passed the ball probably better than any team we’ve played so far. When you don’t pass and they pass and they have two really good hitters on the outside, the game’s over.”

Pilgrim led 6-5 after an early back-and-forth stretch in game one, but Chariho came through with six straight points to take control. The Pats never led again and the Chargers pulled away for a 10-point win. Toth had four kills in the game, and Wilcox had three. Their hitting lanes were often wide open.

“We need to work on disciplining our block,” McGiveron said. “There were just too many gaps. It was like not even putting a block up. That’s something we really need to improve on because that’s one of our flaws right now.”

Pilgrim trailed 13-8 in game two but won six of the next seven points to tie the score at 14. Phil Nemirow and Ethan Schneider had kills while Blake Doelling had an ace and a block.

The Pats took their first lead at 16-15 on a Caleb Fournier kill and stayed just ahead of the Chargers almost the whole way. But after falling behind 23-20, Chariho got three straight kills by Wilcox to tie the game, then got a block from him to take the lead. Pilgrim couldn’t return the next serve, and the Chargers prevailed 25-23 thanks to five points in a row.

“We played pretty well in that game,” McGiveron said. “The passing was a little better, not that it was anything great. We were up 23-20. We forced them to call two timeouts and then we didn’t come out and execute. I told these guys to play disciplined and get the last two points. It didn’t happen.”

And when it didn’t, the bottom fell out for game three. Pilgrim fell behind 12-0 and never recovered.

“Obviously, that’s what you get when you don’t win the second one,” McGiveron said.

The loss put a damper on what had been a great stretch for the Pats. They took care of business against EWG then went 7-1 in pool play at the Little Rhody Invitational, which featured 10 Rhode Island teams and four Massachusetts squads. They lost a best-of-three match to Cranston West in the championship.

“Overall, we had a great time,” McGiveron said. “It was a great tournament.”

The Pats will try to recapture their tournament form as they move forward. They will host East Providence – who’s 4-1 in Division I-North – on Thursday at 6:30 p.m., before visiting La Salle and Cranston East for key matches next week.

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