MVB: Bisons take another set over No. 1 ranked Alberta in 3-1 loss

WINNIPEG – After pushing the defending U SPORTS national champions to their limit on Friday night, the University of Manitoba Bisons men’s volleyball team welcomed the Alberta Golden Bears back to the court inside the Investors Group Athletic Centre on Saturday.
 
The previous night Manitoba took the first two sets of the match to surprise the No.1-ranked Golden Bears. However, Alberta showed their championship pedigree by storming back to complete the five-set comeback victory over the Bisons. 
 
For a second consecutive night, the hosts were able to hang with the nation’s top team, splitting the first two sets of the match. Alberta’s offence begin to click the rest of the way to grab their 15th win of the season while dropping Manitoba’s record to 6-10. The Herd remain in a three-way tie for seventh. 
 
“Overall I still think we had a really good weekend,” said Bisons Head Coach Lupo Ludwig. “We only played one poor set out of the nine against a really good Alberta team. What we did today, yesterday and last week too, we were really really focused. We didn’t have any big ups or downs, we stayed at a pretty clean level.”
 
Eric Ogaranko and Spencer Grahame led the Bisons attack in the loss. Ogaranko tallied 14 kills while Grahame pitched in with nine kills of his own along with two service aces.
 
Alberta was led by Isaac Heslinga’s 14 kills, while the Golden Bears had ten service aces as a team. 
 
The hosts trailed for most of the first set before the second-year Grahame put down his first kill of the night to tie the set at 11-11. From that point the visitors slowly began to pull away from Manitoba, eventually putting the set away on a service ace to take the first 25-21. 
 
The two sides fought to another draw to begin the second frame, this time at 7-7. 
 
Later in the set, Grahame fired a service ace into the Alberta court followed up by another powerful serve that proved to be too much to handle for the Golden Bears, tying the set at 14. 
 
A few points later Jonah Dueck put down his own service ace, giving the Bisons their first lead in the second at 16-15. Later on with the Herd up by one, Mandryk got on the board with his first solo block of the match to give his Manitoba a 22-20 lead late in the second frame. 
 
Matthew Campbell used another service ace to put the Bisons on set point before Ogaranko sealed the set for the hosts with his seventh kill of the match. 
 
The visitors used an 8-1 run to begin the third set to grab an early, sizeable lead over Manitoba. Alberta went on to dominate the rest of the third grabbing a 24-11 lead before a Billy Johnstone kill ended it for the Golden Bears to take a 2-1 lead on sets. 
 
After using the last half of the third set to regroup, the Herd came out in the fourth with a big response by fighting the Bears to a 10-10 draw. 
 
The two sides proceeded to go point-for-point through the middle portion of the fourth frame and were once again tied at 16-16. Alberta then used a 5-0 run to take a stranglehold on the set and went on to seal the match with a 25-20 fourth set victory. 
 
Next weekend the Bisons will be on the road for a pair of games in Saskatoon when they take on the Saskatchewan Huskies on January 20-21.