The UBC Thunderbirds (5-10) earned their third straight victory in a 3-0 (25-17, 25-19, 25-22) win over the UBC Okanagan Heat (0-17) at War Memorial Gym - pulling to within two points of the Canada West playoffs with seven games remaining in the regular season.
 
Coltyn Liu totalled 12 kills and a T-Bird team-high nine digs, Matt Neaves had 12 kills with five blocks and Jordan Deshane put up five kills with four blocks and two aces. Second-year setter Zec Johnson racked up 34 assists to go along with two aces and eight digs in the starting role.


 
"Zec is always a guy that brings a really high level of energy and focus," said UBC head coach Mike Hawkins. "I thought today he set a very intelligent game, made a lot of good decisions and earned good sets out of it."
 
Coach Hawkins also liked what he saw from his team's serving performance in the victory.
 
"I thought we were really tactical from the service line," said Hawkins. "We understood the fine line between being aggressive and reckless. In the second set we started out with quite a few missed serves, but I think we went back to hitting our best serve regardless of who was in that spot. We understood the right velocity to hit at the right times."
 
Matt Aubrey and Max Heppell led the Heat with seven kills each - Aubrey added two blocks - and Denham O'Reilly finished with eight digs in the loss.


 
Early in the opening set, Michael Dowhaniuk served an ace to tie it up at 3-3 and his first kill of the match made it 12-9. Johnson fired back-to-back aces and Neaves came up with a big block for a 17-10 advantage. Shawn Zhao's first kill of the match for the Heat made it a four-point deficit at 21-17 T-Birds, but the home team held steady for a 25-17 set victory.
 
The second set got off to a rocky start with a series of errors from both sides of the net, and the two teams were even at 13-13. A UBCO ball-handling error put the home team up 14-13 and Liu's seventh kill added to the lead. Deshane's second ace gave the Thunderbirds a brief three-point edge, but the Heat came back to tie it on a Cam Vanderveen block at 17-17 - prompting a T-Bird timeout. UBC stormed out to a 6-1 run after the break, and Joel Regehr won it on his first ace, 25-19.


 
UBC jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the third and led 16-10 at the technical timeout. The Heat continued to battle and Heppell made it a five-point game with an ace at 21-16 UBC. UBCO clawed to within two after a string of Thunderbird errors made it 22-20, and were within one at 23-22 after a crucial Aubrey block. Dowhaniuk responded with a kill for UBC's first match point that he closed out on his sixth kill - 25-22.
 
UBC and UBCO will square off in the series finale on Saturday at War Memorial Gym - first serve slated for 6:30 p.m. Hawkins says his team will look to make a few defensive refinements heading into game two. 
 
"I think it took us a little while to understand their angles and their approaches, so I think if we clean that up we should be better tomorrow."