BU MIDTERM: Brandon builds on blocks, gets back to .500

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/12/2022 (1179 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Block party.

Location: Wherever the Brandon University men’s volleyball team plays.

Time: When the other team desperately needs a kill.

The Bobcats blocked 61 balls in 22 sets to win five of their last six matches to get to 6-6, good for sixth in Canada West standings before the semester break.

“We were very, very good,” BU head coach Grant Wilson said of his block defence.

“It honestly didn’t matter if the other team was in system or not. We were reading very well, getting ourselves in good positions and finding a way, whether it was to get a solid block or just to get a slow-down touch, get our defence to pop it up and score in transition.”

Blocking is how teams can turn points and sets around. It’s how they turned a season around from a dismal 1-5 start against an admittedly difficult slate of opponents. The Bobcats are one of the smaller teams in the conference but sit third with 2.27 blocks per set, just .02 back of the Canada West lead.

Wilson explains what makes that possible as we continue our BU mid-term reports with men’s volleyball.

THE ART OF REJECTION

Brandon blocks well for a few reasons. The first is a pair of speedy middle blockers in six-foot-seven Philipp Lauter and six-foot-four Paycen Warkentin, who boasts the highest block touch on the team.

The keys Wilson cites are his players’ ability to read opponents and anticipate where the ball is going, and their understanding of BU’s game plan. The blockers know how to position themselves against each attacker, and who’s most likely to get the ball.

That comes from the team’s extensive data analysis, tracking opponents’ tendencies as the season or match goes on.

They make decisions based on a combination of reading and playing the odds.

“It’s easier to play the guessing game when you’re up,” Wilson said. “And that’s what we have talked about is trying to put ourselves in a situation where come 20 or after, if we have a bit of a lead, based on the pre-scouting we do and information we have, we feel like we can roll the dice and do things that put ourselves in a pretty advantageous situation.

“It’s harder to roll the dice when you’re down … It’s easier for the other team to not be as predictable. When a team is up, there’s less pressure to set their key people in key situations.”

Bobcat fans can reach into their memory banks to the 2019-20 season when the team was nearly unstoppable early with Seth Friesen, Robin Baghdady and Elliott Viles on the outside. When Friesen and Baghdady missed time due to concussions, the Bobcats fed Viles almost every single ball late when trailing.

FINDING FIREPOWER

The Bobcats were in for a drop in offensive production when senior setter Jake Fleming left and second-year JJ Love took over.

They also lost six-foot-eight Brazilian outside hitter Joao Cunha, leaving a lineup that plays it safe for the most part. BU is 11th out of 13 Canada West teams at 9.86 kills per set while sitting seventh at a .224 hitting percentage.

As Brandon expected, Tom Friesen and Lauter emerged as the attacking leaders. Friesen’s at 3.00 kps at a .309 hitting percentage while Lauter sits at 2.24 and .267, with a bit of extra volume but a drop in efficiency as a rare middle to stay on for back-row rotations.

Max Brook is next with 1.65 kps and a sub-par .119 hitting percentage, while Warkentin has scored on 41 of his 87 attempts with just 10 errors for a team-leading .356 hitting percentage.

Rylan Metcalf chipped in 58 kills with 34 errors, hitting .125 as the starting right side. Wilson said the guys that aren’t scoring as much are showing up in other important ways.

“Phenomenal. They’ve all made huge contributions whether it’s been kills or not,” Wilson said. “We pride ourselves in our block defence and they’ve all been successful in that. Our service pressure has been good from all those guys in the last few weeks.

“They bring such a positive, energetic environment to our group and it pushes us to be better … they’ve had an enormous impact for sure.”

As usual, Wilson tinkered with his starting rotation and substitutes more in the early stages than in the past few weeks. Part of that is the Bobcats won five of their last six matches and saw little reason to mess with a winning formula. But the picture becomes clearer with more stats and larger sample sizes to back up the coaching staff’s belief of what their best lineup is.

“It was more of a challenge early where certain people were working hard to try to be a starter and get in that main role,” Wilson said.

“When they weren’t they were maybe questioning themselves or questioning what was going on. As the term progressed, it sorted itself out. Guys are a little more comfortable, bought into their roles and are more accepting. It’s easier to buy into your roles when you’re winning.”

MOVING FORWARD

Four of Brandon’s six losses were on the road. On top of already tougher conditions associated with travelling, Wilson felt the gyms they played in were tough to adjust to.

He likes the second-semester slate, starting with UBC Okanagan on Jan. 6-7, Fraser Valley on Jan. 27-28 and Mount Royal on Feb. 10-11.

It’s the home contests against Calgary (Jan. 20-21), and especially Saskatchewan (Feb. 3-4) and Trinity Western (Feb. 17-18) that will test Brandon.

Wilson felt his group’s biggest weakness during the first half was consistency. That started with the first touch. BU missed a ton of serves early and struggled to pass well enough to snap scoring runs.

But the Bobcats appear on the right track entering the break and will shake the Christmas rust off with a trip to California on Dec. 27. They have a tournament at Concordia University-Irvine and will train with the University of California-Irvine for a few days before heading straight to Kelowna, B.C., to resume the regular season in January.

The first match back will be rowdy. It’s an 11 a.m. PST start in front of hundreds of grade-school kids, much like the Bobcats have staged in the past.

“I can’t wait. It’ll be awesome … I love disappointing the opposition,” Wilson said with a chuckle. “You take pride in those situations. Everybody’s against you, use it as motivation. It’ll just be an amazing environment for our guys to be a part of. As an athlete, as a coach you thrive in those situations, you look forward to it.”

Given the slow start, Wilson is satisfied with 6-6, middle of the Canada West pack. The Bobcats need to start 2023 on the right foot though. The combined record of their first three opponents is 10-26. The last three are a combined 28-8.

Brandon hopes to learn from its few upset losses and take care of business.

“We certainly felt like we let some games slip away,” Wilson said. “We knew we had a tough schedule but the big thing is we continually progressed to get better as the term went and it really was irrelevant who was on the other side of the net.

“We were playing our best volleyball at the end of the term and that’s what you want to do and be able to build off of that moving into Term 2.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @thomasmfriesen