BU improves, meets same old fate

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This article was published 07/03/2024 (821 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Imagine being a Brandon University Bobcat on a hot July day, jumping in your car for a trip to the beach. You tune to Q Country 91.5 and hear Morgan Wallen’s smooth, southern twang.

“They beat us every damn year …”

He’s singing about Alabama football — but you instantly think of Trinity Western volleyball.

Mood ruined, you turn around and head back to the gym. You need to train harder. It’s going to take something special to change the seemingly annual tradition of the Spartans ending the Bobcats’ season.

Since the U Sports championship match in 2019, the last four BU men’s volleyball campaigns finished with road losses to TWU in the Canada West semifinals or quarterfinals.

Most recently, the 16-8, No. 6-seed Bobcats took just one of seven sets in a thorough beatdown by the 16-8, No. 3-seed Spartans, as home-court advantage for the first round came down to one point on one of several nights Brandon couldn’t quite finish the job.

“The takeaway is we as a group need to remember that every game is important, every point is important, it doesn’t matter if it’s the first point of the game in the first game of the year or the last point of the game in the game of the year. We’ve gotta fight to win that point and unfortunately, we let it slip a couple of times,” said Bobcats coach Grant Wilson.

“Most years, you’re hosting a playoff series and probably having a really good chance of moving on because of it. Instead, we went to a team that’s a perennial contender and one that played much better in the second half because they were healthier. We ran into the Henry Rempel show and unfortunately didn’t have an answer for it.”

ONE WIN AWAY

Brandon didn’t need to win another match to get precious home-court advantage. It just had to snag a few more sets.

One more match win would have meant third place but even beating TWU 3-0 and falling 3-2 for a split instead of losing 3-1 and winning 3-2 would have placed Brandon third to host Saskatchewan in a much more manageable series.

Canada West updated its tiebreakers this year, awarding three points for three- or four-set wins, two for a 3-2 victory and one for falling in five sets.

BU faired well against the best teams, for the most part. It split Alberta, UBC, TWU and Winnipeg, who comprised the final four. It lost both on home court to a potent Mount Royal Cougars squad.

Wilson looks back at the opening weekend, on the road against Saskatchewan as the one that got away.

“It’s one of those things we joke about as coaches, sometimes you lose the first match of the year and go ‘Huh, that might come back to bite you.’ And truly that’s what happened this year. Losing to Sask in five that first night in my opinion is what hurt,” Wilson said. “I take responsibility for that with the lineup we put out there.”

Wilson debuted Tom Friesen and Philipp Lauter, who missed the pre-season with knee and ankle injuries, respectively. Friesen had a negative hitting percentage, though Brandon led 2-1 and was a few points from a five-set win.

This isn’t to say we’d be talking about a Bobcat team preparing for nationals this week if it had one more win. After all, it went 6-8 against playoff teams while sweeping all five which fell short.

But the Bobcats haven’t lost a home playoff series since 2018 and undeniably would have had a better chance than they had in Langley, B.C. Three Canada West teams qualified for nationals this year so, they would have been one bronze-medal match win away.

SOLID, NOT ELECTRIC

Brandon is good across the board, and Wilson ran a system which made his team better than the sum of its parts.

However, it hinged on passing. When this critical part of the game wasn’t sharp, neither was Brandon. It’s hard to find a university volleyball team which can’t succeed when the setter gets the ball exactly where he wants it. What separates the elite ones is how they can get by when that’s not the case.

Usually, they need a world-beater — a long, hard-hitting beast who can bail them out and turn points around by overpowering a triple block.

The teams which beat Brandon almost always had one. For Winnipeg, it was a 21-kill night from left side Isaiah Olfert. Alberta has Isaac Heslinga, a perennial Canada West all-star. Veteran right side Chris Byam powered Mount Royal to a pair of decisive wins at BU.

Rempel thumped 27 kills in the four-setter which sent Brandon packing.

Brandon is good across the board but doesn’t have one of those. As such, it’s tough to prepare defensively as diggers simply don’t get used to the speed the ball rockets toward them with.

While opponents might have a harder time predicting where the ball’s coming from against Brandon, which boasts a rare six-foot-seven setter who adds to the attack, a two-hand reverse dunk by JJ Love doesn’t illicit fear like a 100-kilometre-per-hour blast from the right side.

THE ROTATION

That being said, Love is on track to establish himself as one of the premier setters in the 13-team league.

He finished seventh with 8.66 assists per set while leading all setters with 77 kills — 30 more than Manitoba’s Sammy Ludwig — and 69 blocks.

“He’s made huge strides for sure. We’ve talked a lot about his ability to minimize situations where hitters get handcuffed or hitters are forced to do certain things. He improved that greatly this year,” Wilson said.

“The best setters typically in this league and our program have never become the best setters until their fourth, fifth years until they start to wrap everything together.”

He added, “He’ll put the time in and he’ll do what he needs to do to continue to improve.”

Brandon’s middle blockers were the talk of the town. Paycen Warkentin and Philipp Lauter finished tied with a nation-leading 122 blocks as BU led U Sports in that category.

Lauter is slated to return next year while the first-team all-star Warkentin graduates, leaving a spot with plenty of competition to fill.

Riley Brunet was the next man up this year but appeared in just three matches and has yet to record a Canada West kill. Fellow Albertan Chris Bryant is coming off ACL surgery and a redshirt year, while incoming rookie Matthew Siebenga from Hamilton will have a real shot to start after spending the fall with Volleyball Canada’s National Excellence Program and starting with his club team.

On the outside, the three spots could seem clearer than the ever-changing cycle of players Wilson rolled through down the stretch.

Jens Watt started the year at libero and became the only mainstay, solidifying BU’s serve receive while putting up 200 kills for a steady .229 hitting percentage. Watt graduates, leaving a projected starting group of Friesen and Liam Pauls at left side and Riley Grusing opposite.

On the other hand, Liam Kindle subbed in regularly for Grusing and offered a change of pace that helped BU to some key wins, and rookies Sam Chen and Jon Droppert are only growing more eager to push for court time.

BU’s dual-libero system remains intact if Wilson wishes. Michael Flor played defence while all-rookie teamer Kale Fisher handled passing points. Fisher was a setter/libero before joining BU and set with NEP — where he played with Droppert and Siebenga — and wants to push for time running the offence along with the recently signed Keon Torz of Winnipeg.

Given the natural desire of any athlete to play as much as possible, it’s safe to say there could be more players less than 100 per cent satisfied with their jobs in 2024-25 than completely pleased.

That becomes one of the big jobs for the head coach, to help everyone embrace the team-first mentality best exemplified by Evan Mah. The backup setter showed what it means to sacrifice, spending his entire career behind Love during points but beside him every other step, whether it was in timeouts to point out holes in the defence or at practice to push the starter and the rest of his teammates.

He and Brunet were always terrific supporters on the sideline, something which couldn’t be said about every starter who spent time on the bench.

THREE WINS AWAY

The Bobcats’ season may be over but they are three wins from a national title. They host the 2025 U Sports championship and thus have an automatic berth into the eight-team event.

However, Wilson says that’s no reason to relax. He said it takes some pressure off and might allow him to experiment with his lineup more, to clearly establish the best roles for everyone.

But as we saw in U Sports men’s basketball this week, a Laval team which had no business competing with the country’s best had to accept the No. 8 seed and No. 1 Victoria stomped the Rouge et Or on their home floor.

Certain restrictions around the seeding process mean Brandon probably needs to make the conference final to have a favourable opening-round matchup to help avoid the same fate.

There’s also a schedule change coming in Canada West, shortening to 20 matches and removing two opponents from each team’s slate. There’s a chance the schedule makers hand BU a giant lump of coal and take the 3-21 UBC Okanagan Heat and the 1-23 MacEwan Griffins off their schedule, making it that much tougher to secure home court and make a playoff run.

“The bottom line is we’ve got to work hard to get better than we are right now,” Wilson said. “You want to go in with the highest seed possible just to make the path of least resistance.

“We’re going to have to be good all year, we’re going to have to be good in the playoffs … and even better in March on home court.

“It’s not like we can sit here and wait for next March to roll around and think we’re going to go in as the 8 seed and find a way to win three straight games because it’s just not that easy.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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