Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – With style and panache, the magnificently mustachioed Jefferson Morrow blasted the winning kill off the hands of a Mount Royal University double block and threw in a wave for good measure.
The MacEwan Griffins have their first win of the Canada West men's volleyball campaign after defeating the visiting Cougars 3-1 (28-26, 18-25, 25-20, 25-22) on Saturday night at the David Atkinson Gym.
"It was a bit low inside," explained Morrow of the winning kill. "I was just aiming for the back wall, aiming for his fingertips. I got lucky and got him."
With the result, the Griffins snap a five-game losing streak to start the season and move into a tie with MRU in the standings, both at 1-5.
"It's huge," said Morrow, who is among several Griffins rocking serious 'staches, deep into their Movember fund-raising campaign DONATE HERE.
"We've been playing some good teams – the top-ranked team and the fourth-ranked team and these guys are the fifth-ranked, basically, in Canada West.
"It was good to come out here and get a win. Last night we were a little disappointed – close sets and we couldn't grasp it. But tonight we came out with a good team effort. And our defence – we wanted it. It showed."
Alexei Walisser led the Griffins with 17 kills on .394 efficiency, Ethan Nashim had 12 kills and nine digs and Morrow had 11 kills. Setter Alexander Lyndon had 45 assists and 10 digs.
"To beat a quality squad like Mount Royal, you can't have passengers," said Poplawski. "I thought everyone was going. For sure, I thought Alex set a very good game for us. I thought he was distributing nicely."
After suffering a straight-sets defeat to MRU on Friday in a match that was close enough to have gone either way, the response from the Griffins was incredible.
"We didn't play the what-if game this morning," said Poplawski of falling 25-23, 25-22, 29-27 on Friday. "I thought it was 'what can we do to be better?'
"We lost by seven (total) points yesterday, so how can we find those extra points? I thought the guys did some things and recognized that and applied it."
The first set was key to the match in that it could have gone either way and the winner would seize the hammer. That turned out to be the Griffins, able to survive 25-24 and 26-25 deficits, winning it on a kill off the block.
"Just the want to get the ball up," said Morrow of the difference in close sets on Saturday. "Yesterday there were a few 50-50 balls where we weren't able to get it up. Today, we turned those 50-50s into our points instead of theirs."
After a 25-18 setback in Set 2 where Chris Byam got rolling and Jacob van Geel's serve overwhelmed the Griffins, en route to a 10-2 MRU run to victory out of the technical timeout, MacEwan regrouped and wrested back control of the match.
Griffins players celebrate after notching their first win of the season on Saturday night (Eduardo Perez photo).
They led for the majority of Sets 3 and 4 and closed it out with back-to-back Nashim and Morrow smashes off of blocks. But it was Jonah Karsten's middle attack that got the Griffins to 20-16 that really stood out as the key moment for Poplawski.
"We passed a two, two-and-a-half off the net and Alex (Lyndon) gets his feet there and runs Karsten and he scores. To me, that was a big point and showed a lot of trust. We needed that side out. It was a very important part of the match.
"This morning, they spent five minutes extra at the end of practice just really working on their connection. It's awesome when you can see something at 11:55 in the morning and at 9 o'clock at night it pays off. As a coach, those are rewarding moments. Sometimes people look at our record and they don't see those things. I know how hard my guys work."
When that hard work pays off in a result, it's something a team can build on.
"You don't want to go 0-fer in the first semester and obviously we're not going to do that now," said Poplawski. "Sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees and you don't know you're making progress because we're not getting results. I think it just reaffirms that the stuff we're working on works.
"We want to have a style and an identity. I thought today was probably the closest we've been to that this year."
Next up for the Griffins is a visit across town to Alberta Dec. 3-4 at the Saville Centre (Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
