What rivalry? Pirates beat Rustlers in three

COSTA MESA — When Chuck Cutenese came up with the game plan for his Orange Coast College women’s volleyball team, little had to do with gaining motivation for playing against a rival.

Cutenese just stuck to the basics. After all, the Pirates really don’t think of the Rustlers as their rivals.

Cutenese said OCC used that to its advantage in its 30-21, 30-25, 30-16 victory over Golden West in the second round of the Southern California Regional Playoffs Saturday.

The Pirates (21-2), the defending state champions, advance to the final four and will face Shasta in Fresno on Friday.

“As a coaching staff, we don’t even talk about the rivalry,” Cutenese said in a telephone interview. “Our rivalry is stronger with Irvine Valley, in the sense that we know more of their girls. Golden West has a lot of girls from out of the area.”

The Rustlers defeated OCC in four games on Oct. 11, snapping the Pirates’ 36-match winning streak. Also, Saturday was the first time Orange Coast and Golden West met in the playoffs since 2001, when the Rustlers swept the Pirates in the state title match.

Saturday was the third meeting between the Orange Empire Conference rivals.

Orange Coast responded from its Oct. 11 loss with a sweep at OCC on Nov. 3.

They brought out the broom again Saturday night. Orange Coast came up with its best performance of the season, Cutenese said.

Sophomore Kiwi Winkler led the way with 19 kills.

“Kiwi is Kiwi,” Cutenese said. “I like to believe the name Kiwi translates into English as steady volleyball player.”

Middle blocker Jennifer Chiffer added nine kills, Jacqi Reed contributed four aces and setter Chelsea Spadaro amassed 37 assists for Orange Coast, the co-champion of the Orange Empire Conference.

Cutenese said his game plan was to keep the ball away from Golden West libero Katie Carlson.

“She’s their best defensive and ball-control player,” Cutenese said. “We also wanted to give Ashlee Moon, our libero, more court to recover and we did that.”

Moon led the Pirates with 19 digs.

“We were trying to get our middles involved,” Cutenese said. “Both Eva [Johnson] and Jen [Chiffer] had good nights.”