MVB: Dinos survive scare, hang on to douse Heat

WINNIPEG — The Calgary Dinos survived a scare but nonetheless are among the undefeated after Day 1 in Pool C play of the Canada West conference men’s volleyball tournament.

The Dinos got 23 kills and a team-high 13 digs from Hamish Hazelden and outlasted the UBC-Okanagan Heat 3-2 (25-16, 25-18, 19-25, 22-25, 15-13) Thursday night at the Duckworth Centre.

Calgary hit above .400 in Sets 1 and 2 and .371 for the night as they joined the Winnipeg Wesmen as the two teams to open with a win for the three-day tournament.

The top two teams from the pool will advance to the second round of the conference post-season.

Lincoln Baines had 17 kills on 24 swings with just one error for Calgary.

“I thought we did a good job in Sets 1, 2. But (the Heat) definitely picked their game up, started digging some balls. Give them credit,” Calgary head coach Rod Durrant said. “They played well in Sets 3 and 4. I didn’t think we responded really good in three and four at times and then in Set 5 our team stepped up and did a tremendous job.”

The Heat were led by Max Heppell’s 18 kills and Noah Carlson’s 15 kills and 12 digs. Eli Risso had a match-high 14 digs.

UBCO found another gear after stalling out through most of the first two sets. The Heat jumped out to a 13-8 lead and stretched that advantage to as many as seven points.

In Set 4 they shook off a 16-13 lead at the technical timeout winning eight of the next nine points to go up 21-17.

“Calgary’s obviously an excellent volleyball team, they’re extremely well-coached, they came out and played to their level early whereas we did not, and that was really the biggest piece,” UBCO head coach Brad Hudson said. “I think we just didn’t show up til the third set to be totally honest. Our group’s worked really hard to become a pretty good volleyball team and I think they’ve got a lot of values … but those things don’t matter if you can’t execute your volleyball skills.”

In Set 5, the Dinos asserted themselves early and jumped to a 5-2 lead aided by back-to-back Baines kills.

The Dinos will take on the Manitoba Bisons at 7:45 p.m. CT Friday, while the Heat meet the host Wesmen at 6 p.m.