CALGARY – The No. 3 Calgary Dinos overcame a tough serving attack and a second-set meltdown to open their best-of-three Canada West quarterfinal series with a 3-1 win over the visiting Regina Cougars Friday night (25-15, 17-25, 25-14, 28-26).
BOX SCORE
The Dinos lead the series 1-0 and will look to close out the Cougars for the second straight season Saturday night in Game 2.
“We defended great. We blocked and touched a lot of balls,” said Dinos coach Jesse Knight, who earned the first playoff win of his young CIS coaching career. “They really did a number on our power hitters tonight. They blocked line and really kept us from getting anything going on the left side, and that's an adjustment we'll have to make for tomorrow night.
“The cool thing about that is that all three of our power hitters kept fighting and none of them finished negative, even though they (Regina) did probably the best job possible on them.”
Both teams struggled to find any flow in the match, and it wasn't until the fourth set that the score tightened up after the first three ended with comfortable margins. Calgary came out firing to open the first set, jumping out to a quick 8-5 lead. Consecutive service aces from Laura Spence vaulted the Dinos into the second technical time out leading 16-9, and from there they continued to cruise to the 25-15 win.
A 52 per cent attack efficiency for the Dinos was turned on its head in the second set, however, as aggressive Regina serving wreaked havoc with the Calgary passing game and forced the Dinos into 12 errors in the set. Regina managed just six kills in the second and led by as many as 11 before Calgary mounted a late comeback, with the bulk of their points coming from Dinos miscues.
“They served us right off the court in that set,” said Knight. “I don't care how good your passers are, when you have Lisa (Abrahamowicz) back hammering jump floats like that along with their spin servers, it becomes very erratic and hard to get comfortable passing.”
The Dinos returned to their virtually error-free ways in the third and never trailed en route to a lopsided 25-14 win.
The fourth set was more like the expected outcome in this series: tight. It was without question Regina's best set of the night, doubling their offensive output to 16 kills from the eight they had posted in each of the previous three frames. Calgary did manage to lead most of the way but could not shake the Cougars, who kept it within three points. At match point the score was 24-21 and the Dinos looked poised to end it quickly, but the scrappy Cougars fought their way back to tie at 24-24. It took a sixth match point for the Dinos to finally end the match, and both of Calgary's final two points came courtesy Regina errors.
Holly Harper was once again the dominant offensive force for Calgary. She opened with five kills on just seven swings in the opening set, extending her total to 18 kills by the end of the night. As Knight mentioned, Calgary left sides Lauren Perry (8 kills), Julie Young (4), and Laura Wilson (4) struggled all night against the Regina block, but all three managed to stay at least even in the kills-errors department. Both Calgary middles were strong on the night, with Laura Littlejohn pounding seven kills while Spence added five. Spence in particular was strong defensively at the net, recording nine block assists as the Dinos posted their best blocking night of the season with 14 total.
Tammy Jule paced the Cougars with an even dozen kills, while Beth Clark added nine and Abrahamowicz tallied eight. Regina libero Kelly Cowan led all players with 18 digs, followed closely by her Calgary counterpart Raynell Lavertu with 17.
The Cougars will attempt to stave off elimination in the series' second game, with first serve at 6 p.m. MT Saturday night in the Jack Simpson Gym. Should Regina force a third match, it would go Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. MT.
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