The University of British Columbia Athletics

Vancouver – After sitting out a week with injury and watching his team drop both games while he was gone, Ben Chow returned to the lineup in impressive fashion for the UBC Thunderbirds on Friday, guiding them to a 3-1 win (21-25, 25-15, 25-18, 25-22) over the Brandon Bobcats with a match-high 17 kills.


 
A slow start, particularly in the serve receive game, hampered UBC in the first set, but the T-Birds clearly looked like the superior team from that point on, beating Brandon in all facets of the game. They outhit the Bobcats .260 to .216, outblocked them 10-7, and had six aces to eight service errors, while Brandon struggled at the line, with three aces and 13 errors.
 
"I give our guys a lot of credit for sticking with it today," said UBC head coach Richard Schick. "In the first set, other than our serve receive, we did a decent job but just didn't step up at times. In the end I thought we pushed the issue a bit more and played very aggressive, and that's the way we have to play. We're smaller guys on the outside, and we're not going to beat anybody by just hitting shots. We have to be aggressive, and those guys did a decent job of that today."
 
One of those smaller guys on the outside is Chow, the team kills leader, who suffered an upper body injury just prior to last week's first match against UBCO that kept him out of that series. The T-Birds dropped both games to UBCO, who came into that series with a 2-10 record.
 
But they looked like a different team back on home court Friday, with Chow and Gabriel Aaron both returning to action. And it certainly didn't take Chow long to get back in the swing of things.
 
"Chow was definitely an important piece for us, for a guy who hasn't touched the ball all week until this morning," Schick said. "Getting some familiarity back with him and Gabe coming back, even though we haven't had a lot of familiarity all year with Milan's injury and things like that – it helps to have those guys."
 
Schick's team hasn't shied away from injury-related adversity this year, playing a big stretch without starting setter Milan Nikic, not to mention missing Jarrid Ireland, last year's kills leader, for the entire season. Even so, he saw a noticeable uptick in the team's comfort level with their top gun back on the floor.
 
"[Chow's] not a real loud guy, but you can just tell that the guys look to him," said Schick. "The best players make others play better, and I think with him it's a unique situation where he kind of just relaxes the group by being out there. He just stabilized things for us and we just looked a lot more comfortable on the court compared to last week."
 
Nikic had a great all-around performance, with four of UBC's six aces and 43 assists, as well as five kills on six attempts, including one on match point. He also mixed things up nicely on offence, helping Chow and his partner on the outside, Quentin Schmidt, rack up 29 combined kills while also getting Alex Russell involved in the middle. The big man had 11 kills on .500 hitting.
 
Dan Boutwell led the Bobcats with 15 kills and Sam Tuivai added 12. Jeremy Davies had nine kills and a team-high 11 digs.
 
The win puts UBC into a tie for third in the Canada West standings at 10-5, while Brandon falls below .500 at 7-8, in a three-way tie for sixth. That puts them in a very tricky spot, since only seven teams get a ticket to the postseason, putting extra pressure on the Bobcats to turn things around and earn a split when these teams wrap up the series on Saturday at 7 p.m.
 
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