Boys volleyball: Naperville Central defeats Naperville North in 3 games
How badly did Naperville Central play in the second boys volleyball game Thursday at Naperville North?
By the time someone other than setter Jeremy Parker recorded a kill, the Redhawks trailed 18-6.
"It was terrible," Naperville Central middle hitter Quinton Gabrielli said. "But we just thought, 'We played well in the first game. Why could we not do that again?' We can play with those teams. We can play with anybody. We just had to step it up.
"It was awesome," he added. "It was just the energy."
Naperville Central (18-15) shrugged off its Game 2 debacle and rallied from a 17-15 deficit in the third set to upend Naperville North 26-24, 12-25, 25-22 and maintain a share of first place in the DuPage Valley Conference at 5-1.
Gabrielli's block at 24-22, his fourth of the third set, sent the Naperville Central fans streaming out the stands to mob their heroes.
"It felt good," Gabrielli said. "It felt good to end it for the team. This was one of our biggest DVC games. This puts us at No. 1 in the DVC. It felt incredible."
Gabrielli had to share the victor's wreath with 6-foot-4 outside hitter Matt Johnson, who had 3 kills and 2 blocks in the Game 1 win and 3 kills in Game 3, including a pair sandwiched around a Naperville North error to give the Redhawks a 22-19 advantage.
"We were making a lot errors in Game 2 and getting in our own heads," Johnson said. "I'm glad we started come back at the end of the second set. We carried that momentum into the third set and just started running from there."
Alex Bryk had 22 digs, Parker added 19 assists and 6 digs, Rashad Fattash had 6 kills and sophomore John Davis added 5 kills for Naperville Central, which travels to Lake Park next Thursday with no worse than a share of the conference title on the line.
"I think we have a lot of heart," Johnson said. "We came into this season and people thought we graduated all of our talent. So we had a lot of things to prove. I think (the Huskies) came in tonight and they weren't expecting a lot out of us at all, and we really caught them by surprise."
Michael Jennings led Naperville North (18-14, 3-3) with 11 kills. Casey Hiller had 6 kills and 4 blocks, Sam Witwer had 7 kills and a block, and Kyle Josupait added 28 assists for the Huskies.
"I'd love to know Naperville Central's digging stats," Naperville North coach Nate Bornancin said. "They were digging everything. I like that our guys didn't get frustrated. They were still swinging away. (The Redhawks') defense was just outstanding.
"We also made some errors at the end," he added. "The most telling statistic was that we had 9 service errors and only 1 ace. It's hard to put runs together when you do that. But our guys played hard. Their guys played hard, too. It was a really fun match to coach."