VANCOUVER – The top-ranked UBC Thunderbirds extended their winning streak into 2013 on Friday night, making it 11 games strong now after a 3-0 victory (25-21, 25-14, 25-15) against the Winnipeg Wesmen at War Memorial Gym.
BOX SCORE
The T-Birds got a great performance from senior setter
Brina Derksen-Bergen, who posted 42 assists in the three-set win while demonstrating her great two-way play by leading all players with 11 digs.
She set UBC's top three attackers almost evenly, with
Lisa Barclay,
Shanice Marcelle and Rosie Schagintweit each getting between 22-24 total attacks. Barclay and Marcelle had 12 kills each while Schlagintweit had 11.
“Brina distributed the ball well in hittable positions, and brought a lot of variety to our offence,” said UBC head coach
Doug Reimer. “That's great to see in a first match back from the break and we should gain some confidence from that going forward.”
Marcelle's numbers stand out the most among the attacking group. She played an error-free match until late in the third set and still finished with just a single attack error and a .458 hitting percentage.
She also led all players with four aces, and was at the service line for 7-0 UBC runs in both the second and third sets. The 'Birds found a lot of success at the service line on Friday whether or not Marcelle had the ball though, totaling seven aces and causing problems in the Wesmen's passing game.
“I think a number of our servers have the ability to get us on a good run and almost across the board we were very good serving today,” Reimer said.
The first set was the only one of the three that was closely contested to the end. UBC got on top 11-6 and nursed a lead between three and five points for the remainder of the set.
Conference kills leader Ozana Nikolic put down a late kill to make it 24-21 UBC, but
Jessica von Schilling got in on her third block of the set on the next point to give the T-Birds a 1-0 lead.
Nikolic was unsurprisingly the focal point of the Winnipeg offence, seeing 38 attack opportunities in the match, but the UBC blockers were effective at slowing her down. She managed nine kills on .079 hitting.
“They battled well and tomorrow I expect them to be adjusted to us as a bigger blocking team,” Reimer said of Winnipeg. “We will have to be a little better blocking against their key hitters, but today we did a good job against those primary attackers.”
Carleen Kruschel was next with six kills for Winnipeg, and she added nine digs.
UBC stays on top of the Canada West standings at 12-1, while the Wesmen fall to 4-9. The teams play the back end of their weekend series on Saturday at War Memorial, beginning at 5 p.m.
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