Manitoba dominates Brandon to sweep weekend

More often than not, the Brandon University Bobcats leave opposing attackers distraught with their blocks.

But the Manitoba Bisons gave them a taste of the feeling they’ve dished out for years on Saturday.

Brandon took one big block after another on the chin to the tune of a 3-0 (25-16, 25-23, 25-19) beatdown to go winless on the Canada West men’s volleyball weekend at the Healthy Living Centre.

“You have a wall about as high as the antenna in front of you on almost every swing. We’ve got to embody that. That’s our culture, that’s our play style and we’ve got time to work on it,” Bobcats co-captain Liam Kindle.

“It’s frustrating having the tables turned on us, but we can use that as motivation and we’re going to. I’m sure we’re going to work a lot on our block defence for the next week. U of M’s a great team, they throw up a wall, there’s no denying that.”

Manitoba (4-4) finished with 10 blocks while Brandon (3-5) recorded only three.

The Bobcats simply weren’t clean enough early, letting the Bisons steal points on four attack errors as they pulled ahead 11-6.

With the lead and the ability to freewheel it from the service line, they did just that, forcing Brandon into predictable sets and parking their massive blocks in the way.

Manitoba recorded three stuff blocks to go with 14 kills and just one error, cruising to an easy set victory.

Kindle got BU going with two kills early in the second set, including one on a perfect fake back-row attack by Liam Pauls.

The fifth-year opposite from Vincent Massey kept rolling, scoring from both pins as BU opened up a 10-5 advantage.

The teams traded points up to 21-16, when lefty Eric Ogaranko rattled off a five-point run that resembled a Groundhog Day that Pauls would like to forget.

Jordon Heppner and Sammy Ludwig rejected him three times in a row to tie the match.

After BU coach Grant Wilson’s second timeout, Kale Fisher finally went back to Kindle, who blasted his eighth kill of the set to break the streak.

Wilson then double-subbed Keon Torz and Ethan Baraniuk in for Kindle and Fisher, then brought them back out following two Brandon hitting errors.

The Bisons capitalized on their only point played with the lead all set at 24-23. Kindle committed a rare error to spoil an otherwise incredible set of work, putting Manitoba up 2-0.

The third set was close to 14-14, when the Bobcats handed a few more untimely points away with hitting errors.

Their passers sent Fisher on the run again, leading to back-to-back Heppner kills. Heppner added a huge block on Pauls to cap another critical Ogaranko serving — this one six points long — run up 22-16.

The Bisons denied Kindle to bring up match point, then Owen Weekes buried his 11th kill to go with just one error to complete the weekend sweep.

Kindle led all scorers with 15 kills, five errors and an ace. He couldn’t care less about that.

“I could have hit -1.000 or +1.000 and it honestly doesn’t matter. I’d like to lose with some humility, but that sucks. That’s garbage. We know we’ve got more in us than that. The good news is we have a bye, we have a lot of time to hone in,” Kindle said.

“Earlier this year, we had a tough two losses to UBC. We had a little time to collect ourselves, take a look inwards, worrying less about our opponents, more about ourselves. We have a chance to do that this week.”

BU returns to home court on Nov. 28-29 against UBC Okanagan.

“I have faith in us,” Kindle said. “We’ve got a ton of skilled players so we’re going to do our best to play our style going forward.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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