The Norwin boys volleyball team captured its fifth straight Section 3-AAA championship last week with victories over Plum and Penn-Trafford, and the Knights were rewarded with a week off as the WPIAL playoffs get under way.

After securing a bye in the WPIAL first round, Norwin (11-1) will host the winner of Fox Chapel Area (6-4) and Pittsburgh Central Catholic (4-6) in the WPIAL quarterfinals on Monday night at 7.

The first-round match is tonight, Thursday.

"Both teams are very different teams. Fox Chapel is a very good ball-control team that keeps its errors to a minimum with two very good outside hitters," Norwin coach Al Warden said. "Central is the tallest team in the WPIAL. Both of them will get our attention, and we will scout them this week."

Other Class AAA qualifiers were Bethel Park (10-0), North Allegheny (10-0), Baldwin (6-4), Seneca Valley (7-3), Penn Hills (10-2), Upper St. Clair (4-6), Butler Area (5-5), Plum (9-3) and Penn-Trafford (6-6).

"We are playing our best ball right now and hope to get through the off week healthy and improve on a few technical things that we do wrong, along with focus on fundamentals," Warden said.

"We may look at a few new wrinkles, but for the most part, keep it simple."

The Knights have hopes of reaching the semifinals and playing for a chance to qualify for the state tournament, which they missed out on last year for the first time in four seasons.

"Our motto the past couple weeks has been to play hard and play smart. We will need to get to our offense without being predictable," the coach said. "We are looking forward to it and believe that we got what we deserved in the seeding, and now we need to go out and have fun but find a way to keep winning."

Norwin managed to hold on to the lead in Section 3 last week with a 3-2 victory over Plum with scores of 25-17, 27-29, 25-22, 17-25 and 15-9.

Matt Ferragonio and Alex Dennison led the way for Norwin with 15 and 13 kills, respectively. Tyler Rupert added 11 kills on only 19 swings from the right side.

"The team blocking made the difference in the early games before the offense started to click," Warden said. "The bottom line, though, was keeping errors to a minimum."

The Knights finished the regular season with a 3-0 win over Penn-Trafford with scores of 25-18, 25-16 and 25-19.

"We knew we needed this game if we wanted the No. 3 seed going into the playoffs."

It was another monster night for Ferragonio with 19 kills, and Dennison had 11.