ABBOTSFORD, B.C. – The Brandon Bobcats punched their ticket to the second round of the Canada West playoffs in impressive fashion, sweeping past the Thompson Rivers WolfPack in three straight sets on Friday evening at the UFV Athletic Centre.
The Bobcats prevailed by scores of 25-20, 25-21 and 25-20 to improve to 2-0 in Canada West men’s volleyball Pool B action, thus ensuring that they – and the Trinity Western Spartans, also 2-0 – will be the two teams from the pool moving on to the next round of the CW post-season. Brandon and Trinity Western close out the round robin on Saturday evening at the Langley Events Centre (8 p.m., CanadaWest.tv).
Thompson Rivers (0-2) saw its chances of advancing evaporate based on Friday’s result. They wrap up the season with one last round-robin match, Saturday at 6 p.m. at UFV vs. the Mount Royal Cougars (also 0-2).
“I thought we were pretty focused, and our first touch was pretty good,” Bobcats head coach Grant Wilson said afterward. “We missed a few serves in the first set, but we got better as the night went on, and our serve-receive was steady so we were able to run the type of offence we wanted to run. Good things worked out for us in the end.”
The first set was closely contested, with Brandon leading 16-14 at the technical timeout. They would slowly pull away from there – key kills came from Philipp Lauter and Max Brook, with Kyle Taylor contributing a pivotal ace. Brandon hit .320 in the first set as a team, while TRU was at .188.
The second set played out much the same as the first, with Brandon just a little bit sharper down the stretch. Many of the points in the late stages came via errors, and back-to-back TRU miscues closed out the set for the Bobcats, 25-21.
Brandon opened a 5-1 lead in the third, highlighted by a pair of Tom Friesen kills. The WolfPack were able to surge ahead 9-8, with Samuel Elgert notching a kill and an ace to spark the rally. The Bobcats, though, would gain some separation in the middle stages with Paycen Warkentin finding success on the attack, and they would go on to close out the match.
“I think they were definitely the more aggressive team,” TRU bench boss Pat Hennelly said of the Bobcats. “They came out and established a lot of things early, and we were kind of on our heels. We knew serving had to be good for us, because their setter’s been great all season and he was great tonight. We kind of struggled from the service line. We didn’t get that feel for what we were doing until basically the third set. We had two guys who didn’t make a serve until the third set, so not really our team that we’ve shown all year.
“I’ve got to give full credit to Brandon, because they came out really assertive – they clearly had a game plan, and they executed it. I get the feeling we just weren’t ready for that type of intensity right now.”
Lauter led a balanced attack for the Bobcats with nine kills, Brook had seven kills, and Jens Watt and Friesen had five apiece. Setter Jake Fleming registered 28 assists.
Corbin Ockerman, with eight kills, was the most successful TRU attacker, while Elgert and Thundersky Walkingbear added five kills each.