KAMLOOPS – With their playoff fate in the air, the Thompson Rivers WolfPack men’s volleyball team was unable to pull off the upset in a 3-0 (25-20, 25-21, 25-20) loss at the hands of the Brandon Bobcats.
In desperate need of a win to keep their hopes of advancing to the Canada West Quarter-finals alive, the WolfPack were unable to put any sustained pressure on a Bobcats squad that all but guaranteed their place in the next round with the win.
The result moves TRU to 0-2 in the four-team round robin of Pool A. With the top two teams in the pool advancing to the next round, the WolfPack now find themselves behind the 2-0 Bobcats and 1-0 Trinity Western Spartans with just one game to play. A slim chance does still exist for the WolfPack to advance, they’ll now scoreboard watch the other game in their pool tonight between the Spartans and MRU Cougars that has yet to finish at the time of writing.
Brandon was the more efficient hitting team on the night and also won the battle from the service line 5-1 and out-blocked the WolfPack 5-2. With there being very little to separate the teams in all three sets, those slim margins allowed the Bobcats to outlast a WolfPack team that played tenacious defence all game long.
Philipp Lauter had nine kills for Brandon as well as a pair of service aces, one solo block and two block assists. Max Brook added seven kills while Jens Watt, Tom Friesen and Paycen Warkentin all finished with five.
The first set was the definition of a defensive battle, with Taylor in particular racking up spectacular dig after spectacular dig for TRU. A slim 16-14 Brandon lead at the technical timeout was stretched to 20-17 before the Bobcats took over late. A Lauter ace and four errors from the WolfPack later and Brandon took the 25-20 set victory.
A second set that was even tighter than the first went the way of the Bobcats thanks in large part to a trio of kills from Warkentin. With the Bobcats leading 22-20, a kill from Sam Flowerday of the ‘Pack wasn’t enough to offset a pair of service errors from the WolfPack and Brandon took the set 25-21.
Ockerman came up big in the third set for the WolfPack, helping the team come back from a 5-1 deficit to take 9-8 lead. A 5-0 Brandon run allowed them to stretch a 15-14 lead all the way to 19-14 and take a firm grip on the third set. The WolfPack rallied late but were unable to get the lead under five as the Bobcats took the set 25-20 to give them a 3-0 sweep in the match.
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