Bobcats win five-set home finale

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/02/2024 (584 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Philipp Lauter unsuccessfully attacked a ball once in the first set. That didn’t happen again until the fifth.

The Brandon University Bobcats middle blocker was surgical for the rest of his team’s last Canada West men’s volleyball regular season match on home court, pounding 13 kills on 16 attempts without an error.

That was the edge BU needed to beat Thompson Rivers 3-2 (22-25, 27-25, 25-21, 21-25, 15-11) at the Healthy Living Centre on Saturday.

“It felt good. It was just good volleyball being played. We had a bunch of little lapses there, but we came back as a team and if I could help, all the better,” Lauter said.

“Our passers did a good job of every now and then we had a perfect pass and we did a good job of capitalizing on that.”

It certainly wasn’t pretty on either side, but the errors especially piled up for the WolfPack (10-12), who now need to sweep the second-place Mount Royal Cougars (16-6) and hope Manitoba (12-10) loses a pair to Saskatchewan (15-7) to make the playoffs.

TRU had 64 kills and 22 errors while Brandon had 48 and 15, but the WolfPack also missed 29 serves and padded the top blocking team in Canada’s stats with 17 stuffs.

In the end, the set that mattered was the fifth and the Bobcats took advantage of one early run to get to 15-7 and keep their hopes of a home-court quarterfinal alive.

“We knew it was important,” BU coach Grant Wilson said of the fifth set. “We also knew we weren’t playing our best volleyball and needed to be a little steadier.

“We were able to right the ship a little bit, took a bit of a lead early and stayed in control of the first touch. That’s just so important in the fifth set. we weathered the storm and were able to pull out a game that maybe we didn’t deserve to win.”

Brandon trailed most of the first set after a slow start, but hung around and tied it 14-14.

The Bobcats struggled to put the ball away and the WolfPack made them pay on a three-point run to lead 20-17. However, Riley Grusing bailed them out with a big back-row kill from a bump set, and then Liam Pauls’ service pressure translated into a pair of Bobcat points to tie it up.

TRU led 23-21 after BU failed to turn in a block and then Grusing smoked a ball long over a block.

The WolfPack pulled ahead 1-0 on their third ace off Bobcat libero Kale Fisher and fifth of the set.

Thompson Rivers continued serving tough and led 14-11, forcing a Grant Wilson timeout when they stuffed JJ Love on his signature two-hand-reverse-dunk dump.

After BU clawed back, it handed the three-point edge back when Grusing pumped a ball into the bleachers and another into a double-block before giving way to substitute Liam Kindle, who immediately scored off hands.

Still, Brandon trailed 23-20 before its block defence came up clutch with three straight stuffs. It took the lead when Paycen Warkentin drew a blocking fault on back-row setter Sam Elgert, beating him to a ball that barely crossed the plane of the net allowing the Bobcat to attack it off Elgert’s hand.

Brandon tied the match 1-1 on a TRU error a few points later.

“Always the second night you’ve seen them play the day before so you know tendencies a little better but I think overall it’s just sticking to what we know, what we do and a few more touches went our way,” Lauter said of the late-set blocking heroics.

“It’s the constant belief we have. there’s no giving up. If they don’t have 25, we can win the set.”

The Bobcats stayed in control much of the third set, up 16-10 at one point and let the WolfPack close the gap to 19-18 but not closer.

Once again, it was the block defence when BU needed stops, plus a massive Warkentin ace to get the four-point edge and a 2-1 lead.

TRU didn’t go down easy after that, scoring the first four points of the fourth set before Wilson took an early breather. Brandon hammered two more balls out of bounds and Wilson took his second timeout.

This one worked a little better as BU fought back to make it 10-8.

Tom Friesen checked in for Pauls the following point and quickly got a kill. The WolfPack had time to watch film on the third-year left side, who saw his first action in two months on Friday and torched them for 16 kills off the bench. They dug or blocked his next five attacks and got ahead 16-11 on a run including two straight BU net violations,

The Bobcats hung around and made the WolfPack work for it but didn’t serve well enough — missing seven and otherwise lobbing the ball in — to put the necessary pressure on the visitors.

With its season on the line, TRU racked up 17 kills and just three errors while limiting BU to eight and four to force the fifth.

A missed-serve battle ensued in the tiebreaker with both teams successfully one-upping each other in how much they could miss the back line by until Love tossed a soft one in for the WolfPack to mishandle, leading to an error and a 6-4 Bobcat lead.

Love pushed it to 8-4 as BU’s blockers did their job.

The Bobcats stacked up for a triple block on right side Rylan Ibbetson when he was stuck hitting on the left, pushing ahead 11-6 and forcing Pat Hennelly’s second timeout.

When TRU made a final push, Love went to Lauter two more times for clutch kills, getting to 14-10.

While Sam Flowerday had a whopping match-high 25 kills, it ended on his serve into the middle of the net.

“We know there’s going to be missed serves,” Wilson said. “Guys are taking risks when we know the game is on the line. You have to be able to get the other team in trouble situations.

“If you serve easy, they’re just going to hammer it down your throat. Both teams know that, both teams went for it and we were able to stabilize our passing enough to get out of rotations, took advantage of some of their misses and it worked out in the end.”

PLAYOFF SCENARIOS

If the Bobcats sweep the Thunderbirds this weekend, they will host a playoff series as the No. 3 or 4 seed.

If they split, UBC will hold the edge in points — teams get three for a 3-0 or 3-1 win and two for a 3-2 victory with the loser getting the other point for going the distance. So BU would need Saskatchewan to lose at least one match and get no more than three points against Manitoba or have Trinity Western (14-8) lose a match to Calgary (7-15).

Two losses would likely drop Brandon to No. 7 if Trinity Western wins one or two matches, meaning a likely trip to Mount Royal just four weeks after the Cougars (16-6) thumped them twice at the HLC.

TRU SWEEPS BU WOMEN

In the women’s match, the WolfPack were fighting for their playoff lives and looked the part in a 3-0 (25-17, 25-19, 25-18) sweep.

Winnipeg native Brooklyn Olfert racked up seven kills on 11 attempts in the first set. Though the rest of the team hit .000, they added five aces in a dominant opening frame.

The Bobcats hit the ball better than the WolfPack in the second set, .200 to .132 but the visitors added five more aces as they pulled away to a 2-0 lead.

TRU pounded 15 kills and three aces in the third set to improve to 8-14, dropping Brandon to 1-21.

Camryn Hildebrand led BU on her Senior Night with eight kills and two errors with six blocks while senior Brianne Stott made six digs.

The Bobcats head to UBC this weekend to close the regular season.

See Tuesday’s Sun for a senior feature on Kallie Ball and Wednesday’s for one on Evan Mah.

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

» Instagram: @thomasfriesen5