“It’s great to win,” said MSC head coach Josh D’Abate. “I would have liked to win in three (games), but man the way we won tonight you can’t ask for anything better.”
Cranston East, a No. 1 seed from II-South, rallied back from a 0-2 deficit, and kept the fans glued to their seats until the final point. After the Mounties took the first two games with scores of 26-24, 25-14, the Thunderbolts evened the match at 2 with close 25-22 and 25-20 decisions. Mount was able to take home the plaque, outlasting Cranston East in the deciding game with a score of 16-14.
“I told them before the game that ‘success to me is if you play the best that you can. That’s all I ask for. You could lose and I would consider it a success, if you did the best that you could,’” Cranston East coach Thomas Ferri said. “I thought that they did. I thought that they played very, very well and probably gave Mount the toughest match of the year.”
Probably? How about definitely?
For the second straight year, senior Owen Jacobs earned MVP honors. He finished with 31 kills, four aces and 13 digs. Russell, a junior, also came through with a monster game, registering seven digs, eight blocks and a career-high 17 kills.
The talented tandem’s efforts, as well as the rest of their teammates, had to be sharp for pretty much the entire afternoon to fend off Cranston West.
While the Thunderbolts lacked the height of the Mounties, it did have an advantage with their speed, and it showed continuously through the match.
The ’Bolts nearly took the opening game of the match. In a game in which no lead was by more than three points, Mount was able to walk off the court with the win.
“That was an important game,” Ferri said. “You always want to win the first one. We had five service errors in the first game and I think that’s the reason we lost that.”
The Mounties, who looked concerned throughout the opener, were a bit more relaxed in the second game.  Mount trailed just once at 1-0 and built a lead to as much as 12 points twice before taking its two-game edge.
But the Mounties, who swept by Barrington and Pilgrim in their first two playoff games, could not make the Thunderbolts their 17th shutout victim of the season. Trailing 14-13 in the third game, Cranston East rattled off six straight points for a 19-16 advantage. Mount came back and tied the score twice at 20 and 22, but couldn’t finish the deal against the Thunderbolts, who took the final three points for the win. Mount didn’t help to its cause with 11 hitting errors and four service errors.
Cranston East had two big rallies in the fourth game, including taking seven of the final eight points to set up the crucial fifth game.
“They are not here because they are a bad team,” D’Abate said. “We’ve had conflicts like that all season - get a win with a big margin and then take our foot off the gas. We did that. We did that today. But don’t take anything away from Cranston East. They deserved to win three and four and we did not. They out-played us. They got the hustle points. They got all the points they deserved to get.”
“I think we were mentally out of it after the second game because we were starting to expect another sweep,” Russell said. “They came back better.”
“I think we got a little cocky (after the second game) and I think that gave them some momentum for the third, fourth and fifth game,” added Jacobs.
Jacobs and Russell rose to the occasion in the final game. Jacobs had a few big kills late in the game and Russell added to the Mounties strength up front, including the title-clinching point, a block on a Cranston East return.
Also contributing to the victory for the Mounties were junior Mark McKenna (51 assists, six digs, two blocks), senior Tom Reilly (six kills, 11 digs, four blocks), senior Eric Mozynski (five assists, 10 digs, two blocks) and senior Sean Canlan (10 kills, 12 digs, three blocks).
For a good portion of the players, it was twice as nice with the back-to-back crowns. In last year’s finals, the Mounties beat Scituate.
“It feels good winning,” Russell said. “It feels better than last year only because it’s now and not in the past.”
“This one was a lot closer,” Jacobs said. “Maybe we didn’t take them as serious (as Scituate). Fortunately we were big enough to keep swinging over them."