VANCOUVER – The U SPORTS No.5-ranked UBC Thunderbirds (13-5) will close out their regular season this weekend when they host the University of the Fraser Valley Cascades (7-11) for a back-to-back matches at War Memorial Gym. Both games will take place after the schools' women's teams play, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. (PT) or later on Friday and 6:00 p.m. (PT) or so on Saturday.
The T-Birds are coming off of a pair of rare losses to the defending U SPORTS Champions and No.1-ranked Alberta Golden Bears. Despite playing without Canada West All-Star outside hitter
Reeve Gingera, the 'Birds took a set off of the Bears each night and reached at least 20 points in every frame over the course of the weekend, giving the top team in the country everything they could handle in their own building.
"We're going to continue to hound teams with our serve and pass," commented UBC lead assistant coach Jay Tremonti. "The Golden Bears were able to expose our reception a bit, that's typically a strength of ours, so we're going to keep strengthening it further.
"We'll also be working on a lot of high ball attacking. When we do get that perfect pass, we've got to be really good with our decision making and really efficient with our attacking."
Despite the defeats, UBC clinched a top-four seed in Canada West and therefore home-court advantage in the conference quarter-finals, a best of three series which will take place between February 27-March 1 at War Memorial Gym.
The T-Birds have played five playoff games, across three series, at War Gym in their previous five seasons under head coach
Mike Hawkins. They have won all five matches, including sweeping the Saskatchewan Huskies in last year's Canada West Quarter-Finals before defeating Winnipeg in a single match for Canada West Bronze, and a ticket to the U SPORTS Championships, two weeks later.
"I think it's everything," said Tremonti, when asked about the importance of home playoff games. "We know that we're a team that plays well at home. I think that's credit to the environment that we create from a game day experience perspective, but also because of all of the staff that we get to utilize when we're at home.
"Whether its Ashley Capewell with strength and conditioning, Courtney Kapustianyk for athletic therapy or the court and technical staff at the games, we're that much stronger of a team at home and we're super excited to play in front of our fans and alumni in the post-season!"
Before their first playoff date, UBC will look to finish the regular season strong and improve their chances at hosting the Canada West Final Four when they take on a Cascades team with plenty of reason to be highly motivated.
Loaded with seniors, UFV currently sits in the 10
th and final play-in position in Canada West, just one game up on Thompson Rivers and two up on Mount Royal, needing to take points off of the T-Birds to ensure that they reach the post-season.
"If you look at their roster, they have a lot of great individual players. Guys who've got some incredible experience with provincial teams, with national teams, a couple of guys who've transferred from other programs," noted Tremonti. "They're a veteran team, they've got a lot of guys graduating, so they're playing for their playoff lives here and for a lot of guys on that roster they're playing to extend their careers, this could be their last weekend playing post-secondary volleyball.
"This is going to be a really hungry team and I think guys like Nimo Benne and Jonas Van Huizen are difference makers, so we're going to have to have a really good plan for to limit their effectiveness.
"It's going to be a scrappy, scrappy match."
Saturday is Seniors Night for the UBC volleyball programs but, remarkably, Thunderbirds men's volleyball will have no graduating seniors to honour for a second straight season.
Tickets for this weekend's games may still be available
here. Stream all of the action, live or on demand, on
Canada West TV.
