Tuesday was a pretty good day for Lincoln-Way Central girls basketball coach Dave Campanile.

At 12:51 a.m. Tuesday morning, Campanile’s wife gave birth to a son. Typical of a coach’s wife, she told him he had a game later that night that he shouldn’t miss.

So, Campanile was on the bench and directed his team to a 43-37 win over SouthWest Suburban Conference and District 210 rival Lincoln-Way West.

“When I got home from practice last night, my wife was fine,” Campanile said. “Right before bed, she said we better get to the hospital. We got there around 11 and the baby was born at 12:51 a.m.

“I haven’t slept at all.”

Senior guard Brooke Katzmann helped the Knights’ coach relax a bit, scoring eight of her 11 points in the fourth quarter to help Central (10-15, 5-7) knock off the Warriors (16-9, 7-5). Katzmann also had a team-high 11 rebounds. Teammate Aubrey Birmingham had a game-high 12 points, while Scarlett Abramowicz had 10 points and seven boards.

West led 30-29 entering the fourth quarter, but Katzmann was fouled twice going to the basket early in the fourth and made all four free throws for a 33-30 Knight lead that they never relinquished. Central held onto the lead by going 12 of 18 from the free-throw line in the fourth quarter and limiting West to just seven points in the quarter to record their sixth win in the last seven games.

“We’re rivals, so we know each other pretty well,” Katzmann said. “It comes down to who executes better and works harder. We worked really hard on defense, got a lot of rebounds and were able to make free throws.

“In the fourth quarter, I wanted to drive and try to get fouled and get to the line. They were focusing on me quite a bit, and a lot of the other girls stepped up. We’ve been doing that a lot lately. We didn’t get off to a great start, but we are playing better every game and getting a lot of confidence.”

Central led 8-7 at the end of the first quarter, but West rallied to take a 21-18 lead into halftime before Central cut it to 30-29 entering the fourth. Molly Finn led West with 10 points, while Mackenzie Roesner and Reagan McCracken each scored eight. Finn also had a team-high six rebounds.

“They executed better than we did,” West coach Ryan White said. “We didn’t have enough of a sense of urgency on defense. They shot 22 free throws in the second half. We weren’t working hard enough on defense and fouled a lot.

“Hopefully this will be a bit of a wake-up call for us with the postseason coming up. Central is short and quick, and we struggled to get to the basket against them. And, we didn’t shoot the greatest from outside.”

Central, meanwhile, basked in the good feelings of six wins in seven games and a Campanile’s newest family addition.

“We’re playing the best we have all season,” Campanile said. “We lost a game to Stagg at the buzzer, or we’d have seven straight wins. I’ve never had a team that started as slow as we did and then came on this strong at the end. It’s kind of crazy to think that about two weeks ago, we were sitting with only four wins.

“We kept telling the girls to just stick with it and trust the process. The seniors have been great at telling the younger players to trust and believe in the process. I am so proud of this group. BK [Katzmann] is our heart and soul, but all of the girls can score. There have been several games where we’ve had three or four girls in double figures.”