The Thompson Rivers University WolfPack and Winnipeg Wesmen wound up their Canadas West men's volleyball weekend series Saturday (Jan 4) at the Duckworth Centre. For the WolfPack, it wasn't the result they wanted.
TRU blew a 2-0 lead and lost in five sets to the hometown Wesmen. The scores were: 22-25,26-28,25-21,25-21,15-10
The victory moves the Wesmen to .500 at 6-6 while the WolfPack dip to 2-10.
The loss spoiled the brilliant individual performance of TRU rookie outside hitter Nemo Benne. The native of Castricum, Netherlands had 30 kills.
Brody Kopec (1
st year, outside hitter, Red Deer, AB) had 11 kills and three blocks.
Anton Napolitano (4
th year, setter, Victoria, AUS) had 11 digs and two service aces.
Sam Taylor Parks (5
th year, middle, Kelowna, BC) added five blocks while libero
Landon Currie (3
rd year, Vernon, BC) had 13 digs.
Winnipeg was led by Daniel Thiessen for a second straight night. He had 21 kills, four assists, four blocks, five digs and a service ace. Nigel Nielsen had 15 kills and seven digs while Mikael Clegg added 37 assists.
COMMENTS BY COACH PAT HENNELLY:
"I have to go back to the feel a bit. Larry (McKay, Winnipeg's head coach) got a guy out there to stabilize their serve receive. That helped them and hurt us. They got into a rhytym in the fourth. We aren't finding ways to lose we are struggling to find ways to win. I told the guys that we deserved tow in one here tonight. At the end of the match, we were standing there looking around and possibly overthinking things. Just the feel out there is that we aren't a team that is pressing to win. That is unfortunate because we gave ourselves opportunities in three, four and five to be in these matches. I thought it was a great 'grind it out win in two. I was proud of the guys efforts tonight. We just have to reset and find ways to go. Next weekend is for a playoff spot. We have to reset quickly and get ready for Manitoba."
"I think last night , we talked about execution and I thought it was cleaner tonight. I thought that there were times that we make a tentative hit or pass. We need to get back to being confident on our side and going after plays that we know we can make. That is the frustrating part. It would be different if we were talking about a team that couldn't hit or serve or potentially block the ball. We had a couple of balls in our hands in the fourth and fifth sets. I will credit the Winnipeg hitters but I am not sure that they are pure tools. That little finish on your block that you have the confidence to get a stuff block versus a tool. In a game as tight as this, a stuff block is going to make the difference. We were allowing other hitters the chance to score and hitting around our block to score. We worked on that at the Christmas Break. We will continue to work on being decisive and trusting that we can make these plays."
UP NEXT:
Thompson Rivers will head home to host their first matches of the 2020 portion of their Canada West regular season next weekend (Jan 10-11). They will entertain the University of Manitoba Bisons at the Tournament Capital Centre. Match time will be 5 PM PDT on the Friday and 6:45 PM on the Saturday.
The Wesmen will head to the BC Okanagan to face the UBCO Heat on Friday and Saturday (Jan 10-11)
All of the above games can been seen on a pay per view basis on Canada West TV presented by Co-op by accessing:
https://cw.yaretv.com/. Results will be available on the WolfPack social media platforms and their website
www.goWolfPack.ca.
