Santa Barbara advances to Saturday’s Division II championship match against top-seeded Valencia of Valencia, which beat Dos Pueblos in four games.
“I feel like the monkey’s off my back,” said a grinning Santa Barbara Coach Chad Arneson. “We found a way. I’m just ecstatic right now.”
Two years ago, it was CdM which was down 14-9 in the decisive fifth game. Same gym, same semifinal match, but the Sea Kings somehow pulled out an 18-16 shocker to take the match.
Last year, it was the Sea Kings who topped the Dons in the Division II championship match.
But No. 2-seeded Santa Barbara (29-4) made sure it paid third-seeded CdM (26-7) back, even as the Sea Kings roared out the gates. They jumped out to a 10-2 lead Wednesday in Game 1, on three successive aces from sophomore Weston Nielsen (10 kills), and won the game going away. In Game 2, Corona del Mar was up, 24-18, and sensing a two-game lead.
It never came. The Dons won eight straight points to capture the game.
“I mean, we probably should have had them that second game,” said USC-bound outside hitter Carlson, who had a match-high 22 kills. “We kind of let up a little bit. I don’t know how to explain it; sometimes that just happens. It happened in the third game for us, we came back because of their mistakes.”
CdM Coach Steve Conti said he wasn’t too concerned about Game 2 in the end.
“We just don’t play the ‘what if’ game here,” Conti said. “Who knows, we could have won that game and the outcome could have been the same. They stole Game 2 from us, but we came right back and stole Game 3 from them.”
