St. Joseph's wins rematch with EB

By Fred Siegle

METUCHEN - A month later, and a different outcome.

St. Joseph's, which lost to East Brunswick on April 1, the opening day of the 2008 boys volleyball season, turned the tables on their Greater Middlesex Conference rival on Thursday (May 1). The Falcons, ranked No. 1 in the PowerZonevb.com state Top 10, beat the No. 3 Bears 25-22, 25-21 in a night-time game that drew a huge crowd, filling the bleachers in the Falcons' gym.

St. Joes is now 24-1, having played an ambitious schedule that has included nearly every team in the top 10, plus a quality tournament in Pennsylvania.

""For the past month we've been thinking about this match,'' said libero Eddie Rossiter. "Every practice has been to get ready for this, after every game, we look at it and say "did we play good enough that we would have beaten East Brunswick?''''

St. Joe's serve receive, led by Rossiter, was a key factor in the match. The passing was near perfect, enabling setter Steve Brandenburg (23 assists) to use the team's full offensive arsenal. Middle Paul Konopacki was nearly unstoppable and led the Falcons with 11 kills. Right side Marcin Midura had 10 kills.

After the score was tied 6-6 in the first game, St. Joe's passing in serve receive enabled the Falcons to side out consistently. East Brunswick served 38 times after that, and the Falcons sided out 27 times. (Side note: under the former sideout scoring method, the scores of the games would have been 12-7, 9-7.)

That included a back 31 to Konopacki that worked several times.

"We started working on that in practice, and we still don't have it down completely,'' Konopacki said. "It's supposed to be like a shoot, and it's not there yet. But I felt unstoppable tonight.''

"We're going to try to do that every time in that rotation (where Konopacki is in the front right),'' Brandenburg said. "Paul runs the back 31, (leftside hitter) Danny (Vaccariello) runs a shoot, and that should take the other team's left side and right side out, and the middle has to commit to one or the other. Then we have Marcin hitting pipe, and I'm also in the front row. That's probably our best rotation, we really have four options.''

"Paul was a monster tonight,'' Rossiter said. "With him, we know, as long as we make a good pass, if he gets set it'll be a kill. We're totally confident when he's hitting.''

East Brunswick only had two leads in the entire match, gaining 14-13 and 15-14 edges in the first game, both times on kills by Mike Kvidahl (11 kills). But Konopacki ran the back 31 to tie the score at 15-all, and two East Brunswick errors gave St. Joes the lead for good.

"The first time we played them, we got behind a little, then fell apart, we started yelling at each other,'' Rossiter said. "This time, we kept our heads up and worked together.''

East Brunswick fell to 13-2 with the loss. The two teams could meet at least two more times this season, in the GMC and state tournaments. They'll also both be participating in the Super Six Showcase at St. Joes on May 10, but won't play each other there.