MONTREAL – Co-captain Charlene Robitaille scored a game-high 15.5 points as No.9 ranked McGill cruised to a 3-0 sweep over visiting Ottawa in women’s volleyball at Love Competition Hall, on Super Bowl Sunday. The set scores were 25-23, 25-18 and 25-15.
It was the sixth consecutive win for the Martlets, who improved their unblemished home-court record to 10-0. Since the last loss, a 3-1 decision to UQAM, the Martlets have won 18 of their last 19 sets.
The result over Ottawa improved McGill’s record to 15-5 and moved the Martlets back into a first-place tie with rival Montreal (15-4), which has one game in hand, against Ottawa on Feb. 16.
The stats were evenly matched except in the hitting department, where McGill registered a dominating 23.0 per cent success rate, with 31 kills and only 14 errors on 74 total attempts. The Gee-Gees connected on only 2.3 per cent, with 29 kills and a whopping 27 hitting errors on 88 attempts.
“Ottawa played really well in the first set, they needed to win to qualify for the playoffs” said McGill head coach Rachèle Béliveau, who called a timeout with the Gee-Gees leading 22-20. “We needed to make some adjustments on how to play them and we needed to respond to the challenge when they pressured us. I was pleased with how we resisted their pressure. Our defence came up big, we dug a lot of balls.”
McGill posted 29 digs and 11 stuff blocks.
Robitaille, who had a well-rounded game, scored her points on the strength of 10 kills, a pair of stuff blocks and seven assisted blocks. She was also credited with three digs and three assists. Robitaille is now ranked second among league leaders with 0.84 blocks per set.
Setter Audrey Trottier of Longueuil, Que., went the distance for the second straight outing. The fifth-year science senior collected 24 assists, along with a pair of aces, three assisted blocks and four digs.
“Audrey was an outstanding leader today,” said Béliveau, who made few substitutions once again as the starters have been clicking consistently. “She had good distrubution of her sets, was calm, played really well on defence and finished plays with good blocking.”
The Gee-Gees were led by Grace McKale with 17.5 points and five digs.
Regardless of how the Carabins do against the Gee-Gees next Friday, the RSEQ regular season pennant will be decided when UdeM and McGill cross paths in the final contest on the schedule, slated for Sunday, Feb. 18 in a 1 p.m. tip-off at Love Competition Hall. This showdown will serve as the tie-breaker since the teams split their previous two meetings, with Montreal winning 3-1 at home on Oct. 22 and McGill taking the rematch 3-2 at home on Oct. 29. The Martlets will be gunning for their third-ever pennant in school history with previous first-place finishes in 2018 and 2002.