The University of British Columbia Athletics

VANCOUVER - The UBC Thunderbirds women's volleyball team closed its senior weekend with a second consecutive clean sweep of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies (25-11, 25-19, 25-17) Saturday evening in War Memorial Gymnasium. With the victory, No. 1 UBC improves to 18-2 and earns a first-round bye in the Canada West women's volleyball playoffs as well as the right to host the conference's Final Four tournament; Saskatchewan falls to 8-12.
 
BOX SCORE

Lisa Barclay lead the 'Birds with a game-high 11 kills and eight digs, while Rosie Schlagintweit and Abbey Keeping recorded seven and six kills, respectively. Kirsty Setterlund led the game with 27 assists.
 
Saskatchewan's Candace Hueser paced the Huskies with eight kills, while setter Jina Barker tallied 21 assists and seven digs.
 
UBC head coach Doug Reimer was very pleased with the consistency the team showed this evening.

"Again, I had déjà vu in the sense that I thought we played a great first set. We were really efficient with no attacking errors and 11 kills," he said.

He noted the importance of the consistent serving UBC demonstrated this weekend.

"It's probably under-recognized how critical serving is, but that first contact serve and pass is important. Everybody served well, but Lisa and Mariah served very well all weekend. Last night, Lisa served almost 23 times, which is a credit to both how well she served without errors as well as our team's ability to avoid making mistakes."

Kayla Tycholiz knocked down a kill early to give her Saskatchewan team a 4-3 but Keeping recorded three kills and two service aces as part of an 8-1 run that put UBC up 11-5 and forced a timeout call by the visitors.

Three Saskatchewan errors helped keep the momentum in UBC's favour, and following the technical timeout, the 'Birds went on a 9-2 run over the Huskies to clinch the first set, 25-11.

Three Thunderbird errors and consistent Saskatchewan serving helped the Huskies take an early 5-1 lead in the second set. Schlagintweit and Juliana Kaufmanis sent powerful attacks over the net to help UBC get back on track, and by the technical timeout, UBC held a comfortable five-point lead. Saskatchewan's Hueser put up a solid four kills in an attempt to keep the Huskies alive, but UBC rolled its momentum through the remainder of the second set, and a dominant attack from Barclay closed the second set, 25-19.
 
The home team started strong in set three, winning seven straight points - including two more aces from Kepping - to jump ahead 9-1 early in the set. Saskatchewan replied with a 6-1 run that included four errors by UBC, closing the gap to five going into the technical timeout. Despite scoring two straight after that technical break, Saskatchewan couldn't hold off the T-Birds' attack, which saw three Barclay and two Alissa Coulter kills push the final score to 25-17.

Reimer also mentioned the merits in Saskatchewan's play.

"I thought Saskatchewan served the ball better in the second to put us off-balance," he said. "We didn't settle down on passing as much as we should have in set three. But, I thought we had good individual performances. Alissa Coulter came in and did a nice job for us. Kirsty ran a pretty good offense tonight and kept a good tempo on the ball to put some pressure on their blocking and defence."
 
Next weekend, the Thunderbirds will travel to Edmonton to take on the Alberta Pandas and the Huskies will host the Mount Royal Cougars.