East finishes third in Bay Invite

The Wauwatosa East boys volleyball team beat Brookfield Central in a Greater Metro Conference match and Pius XI in a hair-raising nonconference battle last week.

They then finished third in the Whitefish Bay Invitational on Saturday.

Tosa East beat conference foe Brookfield Central, 3-1, on Oct. 3 at home to start the week.

The state-ranked Lancers won the first game (25-16), but the Red Raiders came back and won the final three (25-22, 25-23, 25-19).

The story of the night was starting setter Mitch Wagner going down with a sprained ankle on the fourth rally of the first game. The Red Raiders went to Ben Plaisted, who has set before, and novice setter sophomore Brad Larsen for rest of match.

"It was a big win under those circumstances," assistant coach Jim Plaisted said.

Larson had 16 assists and Plaisted handed out 11 while Ben Mihelich had 17 kills and four aces and Plaisted and John Murphy each had five digs.

Two days later the Red Raiders beat Pius XI in a five-game thriller (18-25, 25-21, 34-36, 25-19, 16-14).

Mihelich had 29 kills and nine digs, Plaisted had 14 kills and 23 kills, Larson had 21 assists, Bobby Jensen had two aces and Mich Dillon had nine block assists.

On Saturday the Red Raiders finished tied for third in the prestigious Whitefish Bay Invitational.

They beat Racine Horlick (12-21, 21-18, 15-11), Middleton (21-12, 21-15) and lost to Shorewood (20-22, 16-21) in pool play. They then beat Pius in the quarterfinals (25-27, 25-23, 15-10), but lost to Catholic Memorial in the semis (25-22, 12-25, 10-15) to finished in a tie for third.

Looking at the stat leaders for the day, Mihelich had 53 kills, 20 digs and three aces and Plaisted put together totals of 25 kills, 55 assists and 6.5 total blocks.

Dillon had 15 kills and 8.5 total blocks and Morgan Griffith added 14 kills and 13 digs, Murphy had 12 digs and Sam Schulz had three aces.

Still playing without starting setter Wagner, Larson came through with 32 assists.

Tosa East improved to 20-5 overall.