CALGARY – For the first time since 2002, the University of Calgary Dinos will host a playoff series after dismantling the No. 6 Thompson Rivers WolfPack 3-0 Friday night in the Jack Simpson Gym (25-19, 25-15, 25-22).
BOX SCORE
The win leaves Calgary at 12-5 with one game remaining in the season, and the Dinos will finish either second or third in the final Canada West standings depending on results from the final weekend of competition. A win in Saturday's series ender would guarantee Calgary the second seed in the conference heading into the post-season.
“It was a good win for us,” said Calgary head coach Rod Durrant, who saw his team extend its home unbeaten streak to nine matches with the victory. “We were really excited about the opportunity to host a playoff game, and I think that has been a long time coming for this program.”
The Dinos did it with one of their most dominant performances of the year, holding the WolfPack to just 22 kills in the three sets while hitting better than 55 per cent themselves. Only one Dinos player who had an attempt finished with an efficiency of less than .500 – that being captain Andrew Tallas, who recorded 11 kills for a team-worst 42 per cent efficiency.
On a night where everything was clicking offensively for Calgary, the one negative stat that stood out like a sore thumb was service errors: the Dinos committed no fewer than 20 of them, accounting for better than one third of Thompson Rivers' points on the night.
“Our attacking was very good, Ciaran (McGovern) distributed the ball well, and there was good balance,” said Durrant. “Serving is, however, still an area that we need to continue to address, and we will continue to address it. They know that we're a better serving team than that, and we'll keep working on it before the playoffs.”
Josh Boruck was the top offensive man for TRU with six kills on the night, while Stafan Savoie added five. WolfPack head coach Pat Hennelly used his entire bench in an effort to spark his team, with 12 players seeing action in two or more sets, but they could find no answer for the offensive machine that was the Calgary Dinos on this night.
Omar Langford led the way once again for Calgary, scoring 15 of the Dinos' 49 kills on the night. Tallas' 11 was the next best, while middle Oleg Podporin had a monster night with nine kills on 11 attempts – a staggering 82 per cent average. Chris Hoag chipped in with seven kills, while Graham Vigrass had six. As a team, the Dinos committed just eight errors on the night and managed to out-block the WolfPack by a 6-3 margin.
Thompson Rivers falls to 10-7 with the loss, one of four teams in the conference with seven losses on the year, and the WolfPack is in danger of falling from third place all the way out of a hosting spot in the uber-tight Canada West standings. Calgary and TRU complete their regular season schedules in Saturday night's series finale (8 p.m. MT, Jack Simpson Gym) and both will watch the scoreboard next weekend as the 2008-09 season comes to a close.
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