The reason Morton is seeded fourth in Pool B for the Benet Invitational isn't because tournament director Amy Van Eekeren thought the Mustangs are one of the two weakest teams in the eight-team event that begins Friday night.
It's because information was scarce. Believe you me, I spent an hour longer than I wanted to searching for scraps for this post.
"I tried to do it as fair as possible," Van Eekeren said. "A couple people didn't send it in, so then we tried to look up their records online. Well, you know, not everything was up to date."
Morton (14-1) was undefeated its loss to Lyons Township on April 18. A Lyons player had this to say about Morton on the volleyballmag.com message board.
Morton isa great team. They were undefeated until we (LT) beat them. They are very scrappy and play very solid defence. Still a little wild in other aspects but they will provide a good game for anyone.
So be warned Neuqua Valley. The Wildcats (23-1) may be ranked eighth according to the Chicago Sun-Times and one of the favorites to win this tournament, but they better not play like they did on Wednesday when they play Morton on Saturday morning.
It's bad enough for Neuqua that St. Francis (15-3) is in the same pool. I'm pretty sure that St. Francis remembers that the Wildcats gave the Spartans their first and third losses of the season. They play again on Friday night.
I couldn't find much about Mundelein. In fact, I could tell you more about Mundelein, the village/town/city/whatever it is than Mundelein, the boys volleyball team. So let's move on, shall we?
In Pool A, the heavy is No. 10 Naperville Central (16-3). The Redhawks couldn't hang with Glenbard East on Tuesday, but go the winning feeling back on Thursday night with a two-game win at West Aurora. The good news for Central is that nobody in this tournament is as good as Glenbard East.
Just ask Neuqua where it picked up that one loss.
The rest of Pool A is comprised of Benet (15-7), which has had a horrible week so far with losses to Joliet Catholic and Carmel, Waubonsie Valley (8-9) and Glenbard West.
Here's the book on Glenbard West: this is first tournament of the year for the Hilltoppers and they've only played nine matches. Their record? Ask somebody else because all of the internets were blank when it came to that query.
I haven't seen Waubonsie for a few weeks, but judging from what I've read, the Warriors seem as inconsistent as when I last saw them at the Tiger Classic.
For Benet, this tournament is a necessity. This will be the first taste of big school action for the Redwings, who could use some seasoning before the tournament, according to their coach.
"You try to get in all these tournaments," Van Eekeren said. "It's a matter of, we've only been around three years. So we're on about 10 waiting lists for tournaments, but no one drops out. The logical solution was to start our own tournament and bring in some top teams."
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