AROUND OUA: No. 8 Gaels put away Lions in three straight sets
KINGSTON, Ont. (January 22, 2016) – The No. 8 Gaels (9-3) won a hard fought three set battle (25-20, 26-24, 25-20) against the York Lions (6-7) this Friday night in OUA men's volleyball action at the ARC Main Gym.
SCOREBOARD
Nipissing 3 @ RMC 0
No. 8 Gaels put away Lions in three straight sets
KINGSTON, Ont. (January 22, 2016) – The No. 8 Gaels (9-3) won a hard fought three set battle (25-20, 26-24, 25-20) against the York Lions (6-7) this Friday night in OUA men's volleyball action at the ARC Main Gym.
Mike Tomlinson (Stratford, Ont.) led the Gaels in their win with 13 kills, six digs and a .400 hitting percentage. Marko Dakic (Mississauga, Ont.) was another key performer for Queen's as the former Lion smacked down 11 kills and picked up seven digs. For York, Arthur Swarcz headed the offensive with 14 kills off a 0.360 percentage totaling 17 points
GAME FLOW
The visitors didn't waste any time putting up the first two points of the match to grab the early lead. The Gaels kept close behind York managing to catch them at 10 points apiece where the teams began to trade points with the Lions grabbing a narrow 16-15 lead at the technical timeout.
Queen's burst into the second half of the set scoring their first lead of the night at 17-16 and taking off from there. A handful of kills from Chris Brunet (Calgary, Alta.) put the Gaels up 23-18 forcing York coach Wally Dyba to call a timeout. The Gaels kept it up to score the final two points heading into the second set up 1-0 against the Lions.
Mirroring their first set performance York got up 2-0 before fighting again for dominance as the Gaels tied them at two points to then pull ahead. The second set continued as a competitive battle with the Gaels keeping in front of the Lions until the technical timeout where they held onto a slim one point lead.
The Lions forced the Gaels to call their first timeout of the match as they regained their footing to get ahead 21-18 off five consecutive points. Off a Tyler Scheerhoorn (Belleville, Ont.) block the play turned back in the Gaels favour as they made it to a set point. A big smack down from Swarcz against Queen's only managed to delay the inevitable as the Gaels grabbed a 26-24 second set win.
It was another well matched set in the third frame as the OUA teams matched each other point-for-point with four lead changes and 11 tie points in the third. By the technical timeout the Gaels had picked up enough momentum to hold a three point lead of 16-13. The Lions started to see a comeback slip out of reach as the Gaels kept ahead for the final points of the match. Off a service ace from Scott Brunet (Calgary, Alta.) the Gaels won the set 25-20 to culminate their three set sweep of the York Lions.
FINAL SAY?
"York came out guns blazing and they played as well as they could," said head coach Brenda Willis. "They had one player with international ability, Arthur Swarcz, who we didn't contain very well early on. We asked the servers to be more aggressive because if York couldn't pass well enough, they wouldn't be able to get the ball to him. We made a few more serving errors than I would have liked being that aggressive but we're going to continue to work on that. We want to be an aggressive serving team without worrying about errors."
BY THE NUMBERS
10 – Total team blocks for Queen's.
30 – Assists by Jamie Wright (Kingston, Ont.).
0.435 – Queen's percentage in the second set.
UP NEXT
Catch the Gaels back in action tomorrow night when they will host the Nipissing Lakers at 8:00 pm, following the women's match in the ARC Main Gym.
Source: Queen's Gaels
Warriors continue to roll in 2016 with 3-1 win over Rams
The Warriors continued to roll on Friday night in their first home game of 2016 beating the Ryerson Rams who had also won their first two games of the New Year. Waterloo took the first set 25-23 and final two sets 25-20, 25-21 to top Ryerson 3-1 for their third straight victory.
The Warriors improved to 6-8 and moved into a tie for fifth spot with Western and Nipissing, each at 12 points. For Ryerson it was only their third loss of the season as they saw their record fall to 10-3.
Aidan Simone (London) led the charge with 18 points in the match on his 14 kills, three service aces and two assisted blocks. Simone also collected five digs in the win. Aidan's brother Greg Simone (London) was also an effective attacker with 10 kills in the match.
Up the middle Jordan McConkey (Stratford) put away seven kills and was a force at the net with five blocks. Setting up the boys was Gibson Graham (Markham) who finished with 38 assists and capped off his strong night with a sneaky setters dump on match point. Defensively Erich Woolley (New Dundee) led the way with eight digs.
For Ryerson it was Robert Wojcik and Lucas Coleman teaming up to do most of the damage with a combined 29 kills. Setter Adam Anagnostopoulos finished with 42 assists in a losing effort.
Waterloo will look to make it four straight wins in 2016 tomorrow when they host Toronto in the PAC. Game time is set for 8pm and you can watch it live on OUA.tv.
Source: Waterloo Warriors
