Granite Bay volleyball wins second Nor-Cal game

Granite Bay's top-seeded boys' volleyball team won another home Northern California playoff game on Thursday, defeating a tough Liberty team in four sets to advance to the Nor-Cal Division 1 championship game. On Saturday night, the Grizzlies (30-9), one of four teams left in the state playoffs, will host No. 2 seeded Sanger (31-13), with the winning team advancing to the state championship game held on May 30 at Fresno City College. Thursday against Liberty (29-11), the bigger, taller Grizzlies played well in the first two games and won them 25-20, 25-21. The games were competitive, but never closer than three points late and Granite Bay cruised to victory. In the first game, the Grizzlies had everyone playing well. Davison Gotwals, the team's top hitter, led the way with five kills, but middle blocker Colin Richardson helped out with four kills and Robert Murphy and Owen Tanner both added two kills. Middle blocker Ryan Perdue added two big blocks for points, while Murphy and Scott Camden each had one. In the second game, Gotwals was the main man, as he had eight kills, but Murphy and Camden had just two and the team's blocks dropped from five to one. Right from the start of the third game, as it sometimes happens when a team is leading 2-0, Granite Bay came out flat, while Liberty gave everything they had in a last-ditch effort to keep their season alive. The Lions played well, working up an early 6-1 lead and led by as many as 10 points. Livingston played tough defense throughout, which made kills hard to come by for the Grizzlies, and seemed to frustrate them. Murphy and Camden led the Grizzlies with three kills, while Gotwals only had two. "Our passing fell off," Gotwals said. "We made a couple of runs, but we just couldn't get back into it. I wasn't worried, though. We came back in the fourth set and had a great comeback." The Grizzlies trailed by 10 points at 17-7 and came all the way back to make it a 20-17 match, trailing by three, but that's as close as they got and lost 25-20. "We like to make them exciting," Granite Bay coach Emilie Taylor joked. "We knew if they were passing the ball well, they like to get their middles involved. We hoped to serve tough and hit tough and that worked well until we had our own struggles in the third set. Our serve receive wasn't terrible, but we got out of system and they just camped out on our hitters and then it just snowballed and we lost momentum. "We almost came back to win it, but we came back in the fourth set. I was really happy with the tenacity and energy that we played with." Like Gotwals, Taylor wasn't worried about her team after losing the third set. "We were down by two in the section finals so I knew that we could come back; I know they had it in them," Taylor said. "These are high-stake games so there is more pressure but I tell them just play your game and it will be OK." In the fourth set, which was close throughout, Granite Bay did come through late, playing good volleyball, and finished off the match. The game was tied at 17 and the Grizzlies finished the match on an 8-3 run. Offensively, this set was more like the first one in which the Grizzlies had some balance. Gotwals led the way with five kills, but Richardson had four and Murphy and Tanner had three apiece. "Our team chemistry is what makes us a tough team to beat," Gotwals said. "We're all here; we all try hard, and we all go to practice."