Need to Know

Now, it's down to four.
 
The UBC Thunderbirds women's volleyball team (17-7, 4th in Canada West) will open the Canada West playoff Final Four, held in Kelowna, B.C., with a showdown against the UBC Okanagan Heat (22-2, 1st in Canada West). The contest is set to begin at 6:00 p.m. (PT) on Friday, March 4.
 
Should they win against the Heat, the 'Birds will take on the winners of the Alberta Pandas and Trinity Western Spartans for the conference title on Saturday, March 5.

Last Week

The T-Birds swept their best-of-three quarterfinal matchup with the Brandon Bobcats, winning 3-0 and 3-2 in the series' first two contests.

 

By The Numbers

4 – The T-Birds led Canada West in the regular season with four players in the top 25 for kills-per-set (Brisebois, Kaufmanis, Coulter and MacTaggart). By comparison, UBCO had three (Beamish, Festival, Wuttunee). 
 
0.186 – The T-Birds' finished their first playoff series with a hitting percentage of 0.186, good for second in Canada West, behind Alberta's 0.291.   
 
11 – OH Laura MacTaggart was huge in UBC's series-clinching 3-2 win over Brandon, racking up 11 kills – a mark that the sophomore only hit four times in the regular season.
 

The Matchup 

The 'Birds and the Heat last squared off at the tail end of January, and it did not go well for the Thunderbirds. Mired in a mid-season slump that saw them lose five of six games coming out of the holiday break, UBC fell 3-1, 3-0 to UBCO.
 
Coming off of a bye in the first round of the playoffs afforded them by their Canada West-leading 22-2 regular season, the Heat were prodigious in their ability to keep the ball off the floor – UBCO paced Canada West with 15.20 digs-per-set, nearly 1.3 more than MacEwan's second-ranked mark of 13.91.
 
The other factor In UBCO's phenomenal regular season was the depth of their outside attackers – the Heat have two Canada West All-Stars in fifth-year seniors Katie Wuttunee (First-Team) and Brianna Beamish (Second-Team).That's not even accounting for Megan Festival, whose 2.83 kills ranked 12th in the conference during the regular season.
 
Should they win against UBCO, the 'Birds will face either Alberta or Trinity Western – UBC earned splits against both clubs this year, with a 3-0 loss and a 3-2 win over the Pandas, and a 3-1 loss, followed by a 3-0 win over the Spartans.
 

Coach's Take

"There's no question that we'll have to bring our best volleyball of the year against UBCO and whomever we would play on day two," noted Thunderbirds head coach Doug Reimer. "Hopefully, having already played in that gym, and having played some good volleyball since then, will give the girls a little extra belief that we can take them on. We need to be able to get all of our hitters rolling, because they are very good in coverage, but we also have to prepare for what they can do offensively, because they have several hitters that can do some serious damage."