Burroughs volleyball ends perfect league campaign with sweep of Crescenta Valley
BURBANK — Crescenta Valley High’s boys’ volleyball team ran into a motivated and focused Burroughs squad in the Pacific League finale Tuesday evening.
After surviving a five-game scare in a league win Thursday against Burbank, the Indians refocused and played well against tough competition in the Redondo Tournament.
Motivated by finishing the league campaign with an undefeated record, Burroughs turned in a dominant performance against the Falcons, rolling to a 25-10, 24-18, 25-14 victory at home in the regular season finale.
“After how we played Thursday, it was nice to see how well we played today,” Burroughs Coach Joel Brinton said. “Going down to play in the Redondo Tournament and opening up on Friday, it seemed like some of the guys were still holding on to some of the things from Thursday because it was just so unlike us against Burbank. But Saturday, they really got dialed into the tournament and it was nice to see that spill over into today.”
Burroughs (23-5, 12-0 in league), ranked No. 3 in CIF Southern Section Division II, had already wrapped up its seventh straight Pacific League championship well before Tuesday’s contest. With the win, the Indians completed their third straight undefeated league campaign and have won 43 consecutive league matches dating back to 2013. In the last seven years, Burroughs has compiled a 76-3 league record.
“Joel has done a great job with that program and that showed today,” said Crescenta Valley Coach John Nelson, who coached Brinton when he was a player for the Falcons. “He always seems to get good players and he gets the most out of them.”
Crescenta Valley (17-15, 8-4) finished third in league behind runner-up Burbank (20-11, 9-3), which wrapped up the second spot with a sweep of Arcadia Tuesday. The teams will open the CIF playoffs next week.
Burroughs was paced by Andrew Dalmada, who had a match-high 13 kills to go along with three blocks. Teammate Cameron Capili added 12 kills and Ryan Van Loo contributed 30 assists and 11 digs.
From the outset, it was apparent that Burroughs meant business.
“We are just a resilient bunch and we try and come out and play with intensity and play with heart,” Van Loo said. “Last week, we kind of had a tough go of things, so we really wanted to come out strong today and really give it our all.
“Last time when we played CV they took us to four games and this time we really wanted to beat them in three. We really executed everything that we had in our game plan and we were able to win in three.”
While the Indians came out in the first game and immediately put pressure on the Falcons, Crescenta Valley struggled on the other side of the net. In the opener, the Falcons committed 12 unforced errors and had just five kills. That contributed to Burroughs jumping out to an 11-3 lead. The Indians never let Crescenta Valley into the game, increasing their advantage to 23-9. Burroughs kills by Capili and Dalmada, sandwiched around an Indians’ service error, gave the hosts the first game.
“They were a little different then when we saw them last time,” Nelson said of Burroughs. “We saw them about a month or so ago and they’ve had a month to get better and obviously they have. It’s getting close to playoff time so teams are stepping up a bit.
“But we had some mistakes today. We seem to be in a little bit of a funk lately and we better get out of it in a hurry with playoffs coming.”
In the second game, the Falcons took a 10-8 lead before the Indians embarked on an 8-2 run to take a 16-10 advantage. Crescenta Valley would only get as close as four points the remainder of the stanza.
Although the third game was relatively close early on, Burroughs took control and enjoyed a 22-11 lead before closing things out.
Brett Dunkin had five kills and Tony Anic added four for the Falcons.
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Jeff Tully, jeff.tully@latimes.com
Twitter: @jefftsports
