Lansdale Catholic sweeps Cardinal O’Hara to reach PCL final

LANSDALE >> The Philadelphia Catholic League has pretty much belonged to Lansdale Catholic this season. The Crusaders only loss in league play came in its second meeting with La Salle where they dropped a five-set match after a 12-day layoff.

LC continued its dominance Saturday afternoon taking on Cardinal O’Hara in the PCL semifinals.. Lansdale Catholic took the match in straight sets 25-22,25-18,25-11 after rebounding from a bit of a slow start.

“I know they’re very good,” O’Hara coach Bill Collins said. “They’ve got a great libero, tremendous ball control, run a lot of second tempo sets which is something not many teams in the Catholic league do, pass well, serve well, lot of offense. If they don’t win the Catholic League I will be stunned.”

The formula for LC offensively is pretty simple. Get the ball to setter Colin Duffner and let him set up the big hitters John Van and Matt Mussoline among others. The Crusaders executed the their offensive game plan to perfection.

“The hitters are great, they hit anything, like I can set it anywhere,” Duffner said. “John last year was one of our biggest hitters so we just came into to the season like we’re going to keep feeding him.”

Duffner and crew took care of business as he assisted 22 LC kills including seven assists to Van, who finished with nine kills on the day.

“Colin gets to every ball, I mean he touches every ball,” LC coach Kathy Arnow said. “Setters, you don’t always notice them but he almost never (lets the ball hit the floor) and not only does he touch it he’s putting up a hittable ball.”

The main offensive threat from O’Hara came from middle hitter Lou Repsys although O’Hara struggled at times to get the quality looks he needed to really make LC pay.

“We’re very limited as far as offensive options,” Collins said. “We’ve gotten to this point being able to block, serve and basically we scrap our way to wins. We are not (a team) that anybody is going to worry about offensively. We’ve got Lou and he’s by far our best offensive weapon.”

Sensing a trip to the championship game was on the brink the Crusaders closed out the game strong with a dominating third set. LC opened up as much as an 11-point lead in the final set.

“In the early part of the game we had lack of communication but we picked it up toward the end and that really helped us,” Duffner said.