El Camino rallies past Vaqueros, 3-1

SBCC let big leads slip away in the first two sets on Wednesday night in the Sports Pavilion and El Camino took advantage to post a 3-1 men's volleyball victory. The scores were 27-25, 25-21, 20-25, 25-13.

Evan Yoshimoto led the Vaqueros (6-5, 1-3 WSC) with 14 kills while middle blocker To'o To'o had season highs of 12 kills and seven blocks while hitting a crisp .500. Nick May added 10 kills for SBCC, which played its first match without starting setter Drew Hogan, who suffered an injury last Friday.

Corey McDown filled in for Hogan and distributed 37 assists with five blocks. Carl Mendoza had 20 digs and seven assists.

"It hurts not having our captain (Hogan) out there but Corey stepped in and did a great job," said coach Matt Jones.

The Vaqueros led 22-17 in the first set and 18-12 in the second. The Warriors (9-3), who lead the WSC at 5-0, closed the opening set on a 10-3 run and finished the second set with a 13-3 burst.

"We continue to not treat every minute of practice like it's important, especially in game-type situations," said Jones. "We keep emphasizing if we want to finish sets, we have to treat every point like it's game point. We're not doing that and it's showing in games.

"We continue to give away lead after lead after lead. We're trying to find the guys who are going to get it done at the end of sets."

Roy Powell led the Warriors with 20 kills and a .500 hitting percentage. Middle blocker Karl Acres added 14 kills and hit .600.

SBCC hit .515 while winning the third set 25-20 but didn't hit higher than .176 in the other three sets. There were 15 ties in the third set before the Vaqueros broke open a 16-16 game with a 9-4 closing run.

 Davis Grininger re-directed a set into the back right corner to close out the 25-20 win in Game 3. El Camino dominated the fourth set, jumping out to leads of 5-0, 9-3 and 17-8.

"El Camino is a good team with a good opposite and their libero played nicely," said Jones. "We think we can compete with anybody in this league but if we keep playing upstairs the way we are, we're not going to win a lot of games. We have to get more competitive."

The Vaqueros host Moorpark on Friday at 6 p.m.