Huntington Beach boys’ volleyball beats CdM, takes Sunset League lead

Huntington Beach took command of the Sunset League boys’ volleyball race with a statement-making, four-set romp in its second showdown with fellow national powerhouse Corona del Mar, delivering a pointed response to the Sea Kings’ overwhelming dominance in the first meeting.

What that means from here, who knows? There are no sure things among the Sunset League’s top five, and the Oilers expect they must win away next week at Los Alamitos and Edison — both coming off four-set victories over traditional big-three sides — and again in mid-April at Newport Harbor to claim a second successive championship in the nation’s toughest high school league.

Ben Arguello was dominant on the right side and Huntington Beach was exceptional in the middle, where the first bout was lost, in Friday night’s 25-20, 25-23, 20-25, 25-15 triumph.

Huntington Beach (15-2 overall, 7-1 in the Sunset League) pulled away late in the first two sets — had to hold off CdM (21-5, 6-2) in the second — and, preventing the Sea Kings from scoring off service, were in charge throughout the fourth.

“If anything, that [March 4 loss at Corona del Mar] was a good wake-up call for us, that we can’t just show up,” said Huntington Beach coach Craig Pazanti, whose team is No. 3 in MaxPreps’ and No. 5 in AVCA/USA Today’s national rankings. “We’ve got to put in the work and make sure we’re going to fall back to our training, and that’s what we did. We’ve been training pretty hard since that last match, and I think it’s showing on the court.”

Arguello, a senior opposite, delivered 22 kills — front row, back row, both sides — in a varied, Carter Tchaikovsky-orchestrated attack that relied upon outside hitters Logan Hutnick (12 kills, four blocks), a USC-bound junior, and Colin Choi (six kills), middle blockers Lucas Brazao and Kenno Kosty (combined 15 kills, six blocks), an effective defense led by libero Ivan Hua, and immense depth. Hudson Atwell and Nick Low’s service off the bench was valuable.

“We’ve got a lot of talent,” said Pazanti, who has won three CIF Southern Section, three Southern California Regional and two mythical national titles and last year guided the Oilers to the sectional and regional title games. “We’ve got a lot of depth, and I think one of the keys to us — and a couple of these other [elite] programs — is that in practice every day, we’ve got to go hard against the B side. We have 22 guys on the team, which is a ton, but they can all play volleyball, so we’re not getting easy days off in practice.

“The practice days are sometimes just as hard as the game days. Our B side pushes the A side to get better, and then when we have an opportunity to get some of those guys in and rest some guys — [in the sweep of Fountain Valley] on Wednesday — I think that really helped tonight. They were a little bit fresher, ready to go.”

Corona del Mar, nationally ranked No. 2 and 3 in the aforementioned polls, was alone atop the standings until Wednesday’s four-set upset loss at Edison (10-11, 3-5). It was, head coach Katey Thompson acknowledged, the Sea Kings’ wake-up call and made Friday’s encounter “must-win.”

This, she said, was “definitely a step forward” after the Edison defeat.

“Competing with Huntington, going forward with the level of play on both sides very high, so I’m very happy with that,” she said. “It was just some dumb errors on our side, and we can’t make the dumb errors.”

Certainly not with Arguello at his best.

“Huntington is a team that you can’t be one step behind,” Thompson said. “They are so good, and we had difficulty blocking Ben Arguello, even trying to get the ball away from him. He was the one, the guy we couldn’t stop.”

Penn State-bound outside hitter-turned-setter Drake Foley led CdM with 17 assists, nine kills, three blocks, and two service aces. Outside hitter Ben Brown contributed nine kills, opposite Brady Gant eight kills and two blocks, and middle blocker Daniel Booker seven kills and three blocks.

The Sea Kings held three-point leads in the first two sets but fell behind late in both, rallying to 23-23 in the second. They used a 5-0 run behind Foley’s ace and two kills to take command of the third set, then fell behind early in the finale. Six net violations did not help.

“Those are things that we just can’t have in matches,” Thompson said.

Corona del Mar overwhelmed the Oilers three weeks earlier, getting 26 kills from Foley, Booker and Gant without a hitting error in a 25-20, 25-19, 25-14 rout. Since then, Huntington Beach has won 11 of 12 matches — the only loss a 2-1 decision to national No. 1 Manhattan Beach Mira Costa (23-2) in the Best of the West Tournament semifinals three days later — and surrendered just six of 35 sets.

The Oilers adjusted how they go into the block. Pazanti brought in Golden West College head coach Nick Amado to work with his group.

“These guys really did a number on us [in the first meeting], especially in the middle of the court,” Pazanti said. “Part of [fixing] that is putting a little bit more pressure on them from the service line and getting the ball off the net, and then the other part was really working on some hand position [when blocking], getting across the net, not worried about going super high, just getting over and allowing our defense to do their job.

“We’re not a terrible blocking team, we just weren’t making very good moves with our hands, and I think just getting some hand work in and really getting specific with the technique of the blocking was what we really needed to do.”

It was, Hutnick said, about “seeing the all and not just being up and being an object, but really being aggressive. And that allows us to become the offense.” He could see the difference.

“We were just able to put balls away, and we were really focused on being up on the quick and limiting their options,” he said. “Being able to do that allows us to get into that scene defensively and dig some balls. And being able to do that and keep our passing consistent allows us to set the middle, and set everyone, and get some one-on-one blocks.”

The passing game, too, has become more precise, and, Pazanti noted, “like any other volleyball team at any level, if we pass the ball well and we serve the ball well, we’re going to be in every match.”

Tchaikovsky, a sophomore, says this has enabled Huntington Beach to do “a lot better job running the middle and being efficient through the middle, not just relying on Ben and Logan on the pins.”

The Oilers have four league games to go — plus the Clash of the Titans tournament in Hawaii, where they’ll get another face-off with Mira Costa — and a difficult path to the title. They head Wednesday to Los Alamitos (19-6, 4-3) and next Friday to Edison, which was swept Friday at Newport Harbor.

“Our league is a gauntlet,” Pazanti said. “That’s what I just told these guys [in the postgame meeting]. I said that’s a great win, but we’ve got to come back and play Los Al and Edison next week, both on the road, tough places to play, after coming off big wins of their own: Los Al beating Newport in four and then Edison beating CdM in four.

“There’s just no nights off in this league, and we’ve got to make sure, being in control, that we don’t have to rely on anybody else. We got a little bit of help from Edison on Wednesday, but that doesn’t make it any easier. We’ve still got to show up and play.”