The Thompson Rivers University WolfPack opened up the 2020 portion of their Canada West men's volleyball season on the road in Winnipeg on Friday (Jan 3). They fell to the host Wesmen at the Duckworth Centre 3-1.
 
The scores on Friday (Jan 3) were  25-22,25-19,23-25,25-17.

The Wesmen were led by Daniel Thiessen who had a career night: 21 kills, 12 digs, four blocks and three assists. Winnipeg moves to 5-6 on the year while Thompson Rivers falls to 2-9.

Nemo Benne (1^st year, outside hitter, Castricum, Netherlands) came off the bench to lead TRU with 12 kills.   Brody Kopec (1^st year, outside hitter, Red Deer, AB) had eight kills and three blocks.

Josh Mullaney (4^th year, outside hitter, Calgary, AB) had six kills, five digs and three assists. Anton Napilitano (4^th year, setter, Victoria, AUS) accumulated 21 assists, 10 digs and two service aces.

Landon Currie (3^rd year, setter, Vernon, BC) added 10 digs while Sam Taylor Parks (5^th year, middle, Kelowna, BC) had eight blocks.

COMMENTS BY COACH PAT HENNELLY:

"First semester we had a 23-19 lead on Brandon early and we fell apart.  We aren't in a full rebuild but we lost our main offensive piece from last year (Tim Dobbert). I think it really hurt us as UBC won four in a row in the first half at home.  We were close most nights but at times we were looking around. That was the case a little bit today.  We know what Canada West is all about. It is a meat grinder. Unfortunately, we missed opportunities early when we were playing really good volleyball. Now we are fighting ourselves a little bit.  Credit to Winnipeg, after we won that third set, they picked up their defense in the fourth.  We know that was coming. We know how Larry's (Wesmen coach McKay) teams play.  In the fourth we got back to looking around.  "

On tomorrow:  " We are getting an average pass as our setters seem to be tight.  We want to better on the ball and have quality. We know what we need to do.  We need to fight for every point. We lost ground tonight in terms of some of the rallies.  I would like to see more of that mentality of bettering the ball. I think if we give our outside guys a quality look, we will have a quality result.  "
 
 
UP NEXT:
Thompson Rivers and Winnipeg will do battle again tomorrow (Sat Jan 4).  Match time is 5 PM CDT.  After the match, the WolfPack will return home to the Tournament Capital Centre where they will entertain the University of Manitoba Bisons on January 10-11^th.  Match time on Friday, January 10 th will be 5 PM PDT.  On the Saturday (January 11), the teams will take to the floor at the TCC at 6:45 PM PDT.

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.