Despite early pushes from Niles Notre Dame on Tuesday night, boys volleyball took care of business against the Dons, 27-25 and 25-17.
The victory over Notre Dame (5-4) gave the Kits (6-2) solid momentum while entering conference play this Thursday.
Early in the first set, Evanston fell victim to a 10-5 deficit before calling their first timeout of the match in an effort to stop the bleeding.
“We got off to a slow start,” senior outside hitter Dillon Malow-Williams said. “Setting connections just were not there at the beginning of the match. Serve receiving was also off. This was also our first game on the [east side] of the net so that was definitely a factor to our slow start.”
Evanston chipped away at the deficit slowly but eventually found themselves down 22-24, which meant a set point for the Dons. With their backs against the wall, the Kits didn’t let the pressure get to them and delivered in the clutch.
“[At this point] our focus was on our defense. All week, we have been focusing on what we can control on our side of the net. We just wanted to take whatever came from the other side of the net and then set it up,” Malow-Williams said.
Evanston won the next two points, tying the set at 24-all. The Kits lost the next point on a kill but won three straight to take the set capped off by senior Tyler Stern’s kill on 26-25.
The Kits came out of the break on fire to start the second set. ETHS jumped out to an early 12-5 lead and pushed that to 21-12 not much later. While it didn’t seem like the Kits would face much pressure to close out the set with a nine-point lead, Notre Dame capitalized off multiple Evanston unforced errors and missed serves to win five points in a row.
“It’s tough. You get a little bit ahead of yourself, get greedy, and then start getting into bad habits,” said Malow-Williams. “Going forward, the main thing is keeping everyone accountable and having good discipline.”
Evanston was able to quickly clean up their errors and close out the set, winning the next four points to close out the Dons, 25-17.
Evanston will look to ride the momentum of Tuesday night’s win into their match against Glenbrook North on Thursday.
“We were 0-2 against them last year and took them to three sets both times,” Malow-Williams said.
“We want our get back.”
