Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics
VANCOUVER – After winning the first set over UBC 25-19 on Saturday, the MacEwan Griffins seemed poised to make some noise, if not net their first match victory of the Canada West season.
Then the Thunderbirds brought the thunder.
Launching bombs from the service line, they proceeded to record 11 aces, en route to a 3-1 victory over MacEwan (19-25, 25-11, 25-19, 25-21).
"We were obviously able to win the first set and compete," said Griffins head coach Brad Poplawski. "In the second, third and fourth, they put a lot of stress on us from the service line.
"They have some guys who put some pretty impressive kilometres per hour on their spike serve. They also did a really good job changing depth. They'd roll one. They really just kept us off balance. When you're not passing, it's just hard to get the engine started."
UBC improves to 5-1 with the win, while MacEwan falls to 0-6 in the Canada West men's volleyball standings.
Thunderbirds setter Mason Greves racked up 41 assists as he set the table for a balanced attack that saw both Matt Neaves and Michael Dowhaniuk share the team lead with 13 kills each, while Conaire Taub and Gerard Murray each had nine. Neaves added six aces.
"They put a lot of pressure from the service line," stressed Poplawski. "Their team serving strategy and the way they were moving us around, I thought that was a pretty clinical performance by them.
"We just couldn't get enough done offensively. The guys were trying. We moved guys around, but when they're at the service line, you can't control that. They had some good stuff, so I tip my hat to their team for their serving performance."
Alexei Walisser had a second-straight dominant performance for the Griffins, producing a match-high 18 kills with two aces, four digs and two blocks from his new position on the right side.
"He was very good offensively again," said Poplawski of the fifth-year senior who had 35 kills in the two matches at UBC. "He made a position switch and that's opened some stuff up for him and he's been playing well. It's been good to see."
The other big standout for the Griffins was middle Carsten Bergeron, who had seven kills on a sizzling .700 hitting percentage, adding a team-high three blocks.
"He was really good, especially since they have big middles," said Poplawski. "Carsten put up some really nice numbers. He was going today, so it was a shame we didn't pass better at times. It would have been nice to stay in system even more because we could have gotten him even more volume. When you have a guy like that going, you want to keep feeding him."
Beyond that, the takeaways for the Griffins are that they're really not that far off from the top Canada West teams.
"When we're passing and serving well, we can compete with the top teams," said Poplawski. "It's just that repeatability factor.
"These lessons are expensive because they're coming in losses, but I'm definitely learning a lot about this group. I hope we can bring that into training and heading into the bye week use that time to get better and be ready for Calgary in two weeks."
