Central wins LW bragging rights

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Trailing rival Lincoln-Way East 21-18 in Game 3, Lincoln-Way Central had to step up or suffer a second straight tough defeat.

But unlike their fate on Monday, when they couldn't wrap things up against Providence after holding a 23-22 lead in Game 3, the Knights rose to the challenge Wednesday.

The Knights scored seven of the final eight points to help it pull out a 25-21, 17-25, 25-22 SouthWest Suburban Red victory over the Griffins.

"Any time we walk into this gym and come away with a victory, I'll take it," Knights coach Joann Holverson said. "This was also a big win for us in conference. I was proud of the fact that we didn't start off the match the way we wanted to, but we kept fighting and when we needed to at the end, we pulled it out.

"We had a very intense match on Monday with Providence and sometimes it's really hard for players to get up for so many big matches. Ordinarily we would have spent the whole week focusing on East but we didn't have that luxury. We went back to our game plan toward the end and were able to turn it around."

Things were looking great for the Griffins (8-7, 2-3) in the final game after Mike Bolhuis (12 kills, 12 points, 12 digs) got a pair of kills and then the Knights (13-6, 5-1) fell behind 21-18 after committing a net violation.

Dan Tanjic (five kills, five blocks) got a kill to set up a service by James Cummins (seven kills, four aces), who served five straight points, including a pair of aces, with Tanjic supplying a block and kill along the way.

"In any rivalry it's really tough to come into your opponent's house and beat them on their floor," Tanjic said. "Even though we played sloppy, this was a big conference win. We're just going to take the win and move on and work on things in practice.

"We tried to take the emotion from Providence and add it to this match. In the third game we kicked it up and fought a little harder. James Cummins had some huge serves at the end and that's what shifted the momentum and Brian's [Thorp] sets were perfect."

After Corey Bingham (12 kills) got a kill to give Central a 24-21 lead, East got a point back on a kill by Mike McKenzie (10 kills, eight points, seven digs). But Bingham answered with a kill to close the victory for the Knights, who took a 4-2 lead in that game before falling behind.

"East is a good team and we really had to fight to beat them," Bingham said. "They took us to three games before so we knew they'd come out with the same intensity. It was tough to come back from the Providence match, but we had to stay intense the whole way.

"When we pass well then we run our offense well, and once we did that we strung some points together. Our team has great chemistry since a lot of us play club and we know each other well. We can take criticism from anybody on the team and no one gets angry."

Also for the Knights, Brian Thorp handed out 32 assists and had eight digs, Ryan Warning added 6 kills and Bobby Brodinski contributed 16 digs. For the Griffins, Dan Hunt had 32 assists, Joe Wilhelmsen and Justin Allen had six kills each, Nick Janky added five kills and eight digs and Ryan Wallenga had 17 digs.

"I am so happy with the way that we played," Griffins coach Dawn Murphy said. "We had the lead near the end but we just haven't won enough matches this year to ride out the confidence. But we're going to use this match as a springboard."