Pats move above .500 with sweep of Chargers

Brenton Bauerle
Posted 4/23/15

Ask any coach, from Bill Belichick on down to the lowliest of youth basketball coaches, and they will all tell you that the key to long-term success can be summed up in one word: consistency. Well, …

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Pats move above .500 with sweep of Chargers

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Ask any coach, from Bill Belichick on down to the lowliest of youth basketball coaches, and they will all tell you that the key to long-term success can be summed up in one word: consistency. Well, for the Pilgrim boys’ volleyball team, that pillar of team success remained elusive on Tuesday, as they defeated the Chariho Chargers in a three-game sweep to improve to 4-3 on the young season.

A simple glance at the box score would make it seem as if Pilgrim dominated play for most of the night. The first game of the match was hardly even a contest, with Pilgrim holding a double-digit lead for most of the affair, built on the strength of their explosive offense, and though the second game was much closer (a 25-21 Pilgrim victory that included three ties and two lead changes), it was clear from the very beginning that the talent gap between the Pats and the Chargers was fairly wide.

But as the cliché goes, the box score doesn’t tell the whole story. While Pilgrim did win in dominating fashion, it was mostly due to unforced errors on the part of Chariho. The Chargers routinely missed serves, committed hitting errors or simply failed to get the ball over the net. On the other side, Pilgrim – a team with enough offensive talent to match up with just about any team in the state – never seemed to put it all together, as it alternatively struggled with missed serves and inconsistent sets.

“We go through stretches where we look like we could win the state championship, and then we go through stretches where we look like we can’t beat anybody,” said head coach Mike McGiveron. “That’s kind of been our challenge all year, to stay balanced in all facets of the game.”

There were of course some positives to come out of the game. Pilgrim’s serve receive was excellent throughout the contest, as it routinely made good first passes, leading to good offensive chances.

And on the defensive side, the Pilgrim blockers did their best Great Wall of China impression, registering double-digit blocks and routinely disrupting Chariho’s offense. Senior middle hitter Persio Delomba registered six blocks on his own, and his play did not go unnoticed by his head coach.

“When you’re swinging, you’re always in the back of your mind going to see (Delomba’s) block and sometimes it just makes that hitter adjust enough to hit the ball out of bounds or give us a ball that we can use to get into our offense,” said McGiveron.

All things considered, Pilgrim did what it was supposed to on Tuesday, sweeping a team that had appreciably less talent without breaking much of a sweat. But if the Pats want to get to the promised land, they will need to find some way to build the vaunted consistency necessary of any championship team.

“It’s getting gradually better every game,” said McGiveron. “We’ll get there.”

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