Woodbridge boys volleyball team stuns top seeded Murrieta Valley in CIF playoffs

Woodbridge players celebrate after Saturday’s upset victory (Photos Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).

Woodbridge High’s boys volleyball team stunned top seeded Murrieta Valley Saturday night at Woodbridge winning in five sets in the quarterfinal round of the CIF Division 3 playoffs.

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The Warriors move on to face Quartz Hill Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the semifinals at Woodbridge.

Woodbridge, the No. 2 team from the Pacific Coast League, won the match 25-21, 18-25, 27-25, 19-25, 15-10. Murrieta had not lost a set in its previous two playoff matches.

“I’m not going to lie to you, it feels pretty amazing,” said Woodbridge Coach Alan Ho, who has been head coach for about 10 years. “If we wanted to make a run, they were our next opponent up so we knew we had to go through them or go home.

“We kind of knew what they wanted to do. We knew they wanted to go to number 4 (Kyle Greeley) because he’s a heck of a player out there, but the guys did a really good job of following through with the game plan and we made just enough plays to kind of take it out.”

Ho said it’s the first time in his tenure as head coach that the Warriors have been to the semifinals. He credited his players for their outstanding play.

“I would like to think that I drew up a pretty good game plan and it worked but at the end of the day, you can have the best game plan in the world and if they don’t execute it, it doesn’t mean anything,” Ho said. “So definitely hats off to the guys, they made all the plays. I just write the lineup.”

Woodbridge was led by junior outside hitter/middle blocker Ben Montplaisir, who had 23 kills; senior middle blocker Mani Hosseini, who had 16 kills; and sophomore middle blocker Matthew Edwards, who recorded seven kills.

Murrieta Valley had an early lead in the first set before Woodbridge tied it at 7-7 and finished strong. In the second set, Murrieta Valley took the lead early on and eventually extended it to 20-13 before winning.

The third set turned out to be pivotal. Woodbridge overcame a two-point deficit to win it and take the lead in the match. Murrieta Valley led through most of the fourth set and eventually won to even the match.

But in the fifth set, the Warriors, determined to pull off an upset, took an early 4-1 lead and eventually extended the margin to 11-4.

Murrieta Valley cut the lead to 11-9 on an ace by Michael Hewlett but Montplaisir helped the Warriors notch the final point and win the match.

“We tried to prepare a lot for this team and we knew what we had to do going into it,” Montplaisir said. “We needed to eliminate all of our errors so we could execute throughout the game.

“We definitely thought it was possible going into it; we have such a solid team and we’re very well rounded that we knew if we all played our game we could definitely take down the number one seed.”

-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com