Hilltoppers earn rematch with Marist

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Joliet Catholic came up a little short against Marist when the two teams met earlier this month for the East Suburban Catholic Conference title.

On Tuesday, the Hilltoppers earned another shot at the RedHawks with a regional championship at stake when they defeated Joliet 25-17, 25-19 in the Marist Regional semifinals.

JCA (20-12) takes on Marist, which is the top-seeded team in the upcoming T.F. North Sectional, in Wednesday’s 7 p.m. regional finals in Chicago.

Coach Bob St. Leger’s RedHawks advanced to the finals following a 25-9, 25-16 win over Homewood-Flossmoor in Tuesday’s other semifinal.

The battle between the Joliet squads was tight at the start of each game before the Hilltoppers opened up nice leads over the Steelmen.

Joliet (14-19) was going with a relatively new lineup due to the recent departure of some key players and JCA capitalized on that situation.

“JT has a lot of great athletes that they’ve been pulling in so you’re nervous when you play them since they can do some funky things that can throw you for a loop,” JCA coach Rhyen Staley said. “It will be fun to play in the regional finals against Marist.

“The last few years we’ve been a little jittery in our first regional match but come back solid the next night so that’s what I’m expecting. When we played two weeks ago they did a really good job but we made a few errors that we hope to correct this time.”

In Game 1, the Hilltoppers used a kill by Matt Dollinger (seven kills) to start a 4-0 run that put them in the lead for good at 13-9.

The Steelmen closed to within 18-16 following a kill from Eric Black (20 assists) but JCA scored seven of the last eight points to break things open.

Dollinger had two kills and Keegan Robbins (five kills, seven assists) added a kill during that burst, which was helped by three JT hitting errors and a net violation.

“We definitely knew that we had to play well in order to win,” Dollinger said. “I thought we pulled together pretty well and cut down on our errors and just played really well. I like how we work well together and it’s easier to play when you like each other.

“We know that we have to play a perfect match against Marist. We’re really looking forward to it and we’ve been practicing real hard so hopefully it will turn out better than last time. If we cut down on our errors and play like we can then we should do fine.”

In Game 2, JT tied things at 9-9 following a kill by Josh Tucek (seven kills, nine digs) but JCA used a kill from Robbins to help it move ahead for good.

The Hilltoppers ended the drama as they went on a 7-0 run, thanks to a 6-point service run from Mike Ericksen, to grab a 21-12 advantage.

Also turning in key contributions for JCA were Mike Ranzini (five kills, six digs), Kevin Annis (12 assists) and Brian Bucciarelli (five digs).

JT also got good efforts from Phil Murray (four kills), Alex Smothers (four kills, four blocks), Kevin Black (three kills) and Abel Farias (seven digs).

“In a match where there were a lot of mis-serves both ways, one team needs to capitalize and I think we missed more serves than they did,” JT coach Jason Herrmann said. “We didn’t capitalize when they made mistakes and JCA did a good job of not letting us hang around.

“To give our guys credit, we hadn’t played with this lineup all season and only had a week’s worth of practice. Two sophomores stepped up and played some great ball for us. We handled the adversity well and were in the match but we didn’t execute when we needed to.”