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Sports

Redondo Union Cruises Past Peninsula

Moore and Evans lead the Sea Hawks' sweep of Panthers; the CIF boys volleyball playoff pairings will be released on Sunday.

As the third place team from the Bay League, Redondo Union High is likely to take to the road and take on a highly-seeded opponent in the first round of the CIF playoffs. But the Sea Hawks showed on Thursday that there is some elevation to their game heading into the postseason, efficiently thrashing Peninsula 25-16, 25-12, 25-22 in their final regular season match.

Led in the middle by Austin Moore and Greg Evans, who combined to hit a crazy .840, Redondo Union was never seriously threatened while ruining senior day for the Panthers.

''We had two touch matches last week. We lost to Palos Verdes in four and kind of got worked by [Mira] Costa on Tuesday, so I challenged the guys, told them, you know, we have a chance to make a playoff run, we have a chance to do something,'' Coach Duncan Avery said.

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''I just challenged the guys — it starts with this match and then good practices next week and our first playoff game is next Friday. I think we're a better team. We have a couple more pieces than they do and I think it showed tonight. We passed the ball well and our middles hit an unbelievable percentage. We did a lot of good things tonight.''

The only spot of trouble against Peninsula came in the third game, when the Panthers took their first lead of the match at 13-12. Avery called a timeout to make some adjustments, mainly attitude, and the Sea Hawks won seven of the next 10 points to regain control.

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Along with Moore and Evans, Ryan Olson had 12 kills and Riley Theunissen had nine kills and nine digs. Moore also led the Sea Hawks with six blocks.

To that point Redondo Union had not allowed the Panthers to win three consecutive points just once and the letdown in the third game is something the Sea Hawks cannot afford in the playoffs — the brackets will be released by the CIF on Sunday morning.

They had started the third by winning six of the first eight points, and then let the Panthers close. They pushed the lead back to three, and let Peninsula make another run at them.

''Against a good team, we can't have that let down,'' Avery said. ''When you beat a team pretty handily it's easy to get into that cruise-control rhythm, and it's tough. They're 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids and sometimes after they beat a team so easily in two games, trying to coach those guys and teach them to have that killer instinct. You can't let teams back in it.

''Hopefully, we can just have that mindset, have that mentality, and finish it in big matches. I think it's recognizing situations, letting them be aware. We'll go back home and we'll watch tale and we'll do things and we'll be like, 'Here's a situation where we let them back in the game.' And this is a great opportunity to close out the match, to finish it the right way.''

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