By TOM NYHUIS
Niles Daily Star

Brandywine came into Wednesday night’s Lakeland Conference volleyball match with a score to settle against the visiting Bucks.

Saturday, at the Buck Classic, Buchanan defeated the Bobcats in the championship match and that didn’t set well with the Brandywine team.

Wednesday it was the home team coming up with the good play on the floor that carried them to the 3-1 league win, 25-19, 14-25, 25-14 and 25-16.

The win evened the Bobcat Lakeland record to 2-2 while the Bucks drop to 1-3 in the conference.

“Saturday’s loss gave us an extra oomph to come back and beat Buchanan tonight,” Brandywine coach Nikki Cooper said. “This is the biggest confidence booster that we could use right now. We were kind of slacking and we could never get over the hump and actually win and tonight we did that. It’s awesome”

For Buchanan coach Lisa Holok it was a disappointing showing by her team. “Tonight was a complete disappointment for our team… we totally self destructed and it continued a domino effect from one game into another… there was a little sign of life during game two but it disappeared just as fast as it came. We can only move forward…we have a lot of games left in the season… we pick ourselves up and get better.”

After Brandywine grabbed the 25-19 opening set victory with some nice serves by Lauren Leonard and hard hitting by Kelsey Prestly, the Bucks rebounded with a 25-14 second set win.

In the third set of the match the Bobcats jumped out to a 16-10 lead. Holok called a timeout to try to regroup her players. The damage had already been done and Buchanan couldn’t answer back falling 25-14.

While Brandywine continued to play at the level coach Cooper knew her team was capable of playing Buchanan’s play continued to struggle dropping the final set 25-16.

Leading the Bobcats to the win was Prestly with 19 kills and Leonard finished with six. Kaley Jones came away with 18 assists and Jessy Cooper added 16 assists. Leonard and Jones both had three aces.

“Kelsey did just an awesome job tonight. She moved that ball around when she hit. She didn’t have the usual hit across hit across. She moved it short she moved it line she moved it long. She did an awesome job tonight,” Cooper said of her junior hitter. “We also were focused on our defense and that starts with our blocks and moves to our back row players and all around they did a good job.”

Audrey Oake finished the night with 22 kills Alexis Lenox finished the night with 60 assists to lead the Bucks.