Costa Mesa boys’ volleyball opens with win over Ocean View

The Costa Mesa High boys’ volleyball team has exactly one returning starter.

Christian Pham, the Mustangs’ senior setter, gained his first varsity experience last year. He does not remember much about that season — mostly his team falling short on the scoreboard.

“We lost a lot,” Pham recalled.

Even though the Mustangs went 2-11 overall during the 2017 season, Costa Mesa coach Todd Hanson figures that it did serve Pham well. He says that his setter was brought up before he was ready, but he has seen significant growth from Pham over the last year.

“What hurt us the most last year was losing our starting setter and then bringing up our JV setter [Pham], and he just wasn’t quite there yet,” Hanson said. “This year, he’s gotten a lot more mature. He’s more athletic, and he knows how to run the court a lot better.”

Pham shepherded the Mustangs to a 25-19, 25-13, 15-25, 25-21 season-opening win over visiting Ocean View on Thursday night.

The senior setter had 23 assists and 13 digs. He remarked just how happy he was to see his team reverse its fortunes. Ocean View swept Costa Mesa when the teams met last season.

“It was staying positive, for sure,” Pham said of his team’s key to victory. “It just feels really good to get that first win.”

The Mustangs jumped out to a two-set lead when Eli Elliott came up with a block that clinched Game 2. Fellow middle blocker Josh Barton finished with seven kills and seven blocks.

Ocean View (0-2) is also playing with a bunch of new players, although the Seahawks have three-year varsity setter Hunter Miller (29 assists, 11 digs) running the show.

Both teams appeared to be at their best when the initial pass was one that their floor generals could handle.

“Serving and passing is the biggest part of the game,” Miller said. “When we aren’t serving and we aren’t passing, we have lost the game.”

The Seahawks limited their hitting errors in the third set. In doing so, they bounced back to win Game 3 by a score of 25-15.

Hanson recognized that the match was not being taken to his team. The Mustangs simply needed to clean up their own passing to finish out the match.

“Everybody came together,” Hanson said. “We made our mistakes, but we didn’t get down about it. After playing a really poor third set, we kept our heads up and said, ‘You’re better than this.’

“We reduced our errors, and we won the fourth set.”

Jonathan Barton had a team-high nine kills for the Mustangs. Outside hitter Jason Chiang added eight kills and 14 digs.

Miller doled out seven assists in Game 4. His best connection was with outside hitter Jackson Petrovich (15 kills, 17 digs), who had six kills in the final set. Senior opposite Khristian Nielsen (six kills, seven digs) also swung with more confidence as the match went on.

Ocean View’s first-year coach Joshua Nehls said that he would have liked to see his team salvage more points that were played out of system.

“I wish that the broken plays were better because we work a lot on chaos plays,” Nehls said. “I think what it is mainly, though, is a lot of new guys coming in that are not comfortable playing in this [game] environment.”

andrew.turner@latimes.com

Twitter: @ProfessorTurner