NORWALK – The Huntington Beach boys volleyball team put the finishing touches on the perfect season Saturday night.
The Oilers, who won their second consecutive CIF-SS Division 1 title last week, captured a second CIF Southern California Regional title, sweeping Loyola of Los Angeles, 25-16, 25-20, 25-20, at Cerritos College in the Division I final to finish the season 40-0.
TJ DeFalco led the Oilers with 17 kills, Brenden Sander had 14 and Andrew Pearson chipped in with nine. Pearson hit at a .900 percentage. Sander hit .545.
“My last year here at Huntington, it feels great to go undefeated,” Sander said. “There is no better way to finish it out. We had a huge target on our back coming into this season. All we had to do was to stay calm and stay focused.”
The Oilers defeated the Cubs (26-5) in the CIF final last week. In the first set Saturday, the Oilers closed things out with an 8-0 run and off they went toward perfection.
“Every time you win a match, it keeps building and building up,” Huntington Beach coach Craig Pazanti said. “You didn’t want to lose it here, you wanted to finish things off right, and I’m glad we finished it off right.”
The Oilers had some obstacles to their quest, losing setter Tanner Woods to injury early and having to incorporate setter Josh Tuaniga into the lineup after he became eligible after the 30-day transfer period.
Through it all, they lost just six sets this season and ended up with a 64-consecutive match winning streak. Their last loss came March 18, 2013, against San Clemente in the Orange County Championships.
“I think we executed a lot better this match,” Sander said. “It wasn’t hard to get motivated at all. We wanted to win this thing for sure and go undefeated. That was our goal and it is nice to accomplish your goal.”
Hayden Boehle led the Cubs with 13 kills. Riley Moore had five and Cole Paullin four.
“We knew that everybody wanted to beat us,” Pazanti said. “You watched Loyola last Saturday and they won the second set and it looked like they had won the match. … That’s the kind of effort that it is going to take to beat us.
“Going 40-0 and going undefeated was the goal from the beginning. I know it was a lofty goal at the beginning. I think we hit every one of our goals, the one goal we didn’t hit was to lose a set. We lost six, but was that a realistic goal? I don’t know. I wanted to put the pressure on ourselves to try to play like that every night.”
In the final set, the Cubs took an 18-17 lead on a kill from Boehle. The Oilers then scored six consecutive points for a 23-18 lead.
“It has been like that a lot this year,” Pazanti said. “We’ll play tight, 8-8, 9-9 and then we’ll go on a 3-0 or 4-0 run. We have the pieces to go on runs like that. When we start touching balls at the net and moving in transition, it definitely becomes easy for us to go on those runs.”
Contact the writer: dcalhoun@ocregister.com
