VANCOUVER - The UBC Okanagan Heat were just 2-10 in conference play heading into their first match of 2014 against 9-3 UBC, but they started the new year in impressive fashion with a straight-sets win (25-16, 25-21, 25-22) over the Thunderbirds.
BOX SCORE
"We lost our composure and got frustrated," said UBC head coach
Richard Schick. "Everything UBCO touched turned to gold and we had no answer."
Canada West kills leader Nate Speijer set the tone with a match-high 13 kills while handling the lion's share of his team's total attacks, and the extra attention he attracted from the defence opened things up for Lars Bornemann, especially in the third set, where he had seven of his 11 kills on .524 hitting.
The Heat also generated a lot of points with their blocking, including two straight stuffs by middle Jim Bell to end the match. They had 14 blocks as a team, while UBC had 10. Bell had five block assists and two solos.
UBCO got out to a solid lead early in the first and looked in control for the entire set. Sets two and three were close until around the 20-point milestone, when the Heat were able to get several key blocks finish things off.
The T-Birds, who were missing team kills leader
Ben Chow, struggled to get any sort of consistent offence going, hitting .099 with 21 attack errors. Without Chow's presence on the outside, the 'Birds turned a lot of the offensive responsibilities over to middle
Alex Russell, who led the team with 10 kills on .304 hitting, adding four blocks. Fellow middle
Chris Howe had four kills on just five attacks.
Outside hitters
Noah Derksen and
Quentin Schmidt had seven and four kills respectively. Setter
Milan Nikic had 28 assists, 14 digs, three block assists and one solo block.
The Thunderbirds are now 9-4 on the year, tied for second in Canada West and three games out of first place. The Heat improve to 3-10 and still have an outside shot at the playoffs if they can string together a few more wins. These teams will square off again on Saturday night at 7 p.m. in Kelowna.
