KAMLOOPS, B.C. – Making their first appearance at the Tournament Capital Centre since their 2010 CIS championship victory, the Calgary Dinos opened the 2011-12 regular season with a 3-1 (25-23, 23-25, 25-20, 25-18) win over the Thompson Rivers WolfPack Friday night.
BOX SCORE
After dropping the second set to tie the match up at 1-all, the No. 4-ranked Dinos came out strong in the third and continued that play into the fourth to dispatch the WolfPack.
Dinos head coach
Rod Durrant downplayed the significance of getting the first win of the year on the same court he won a national championship.
“We always like coming back to Kamloops,” he said. “There are great memories. But we have only three players from that team still left. It's time for us to build some new memories and that's what started tonight.”
“Tonight was a bit of a grind for both teams,' he added. “A lot of missed serves broke things up a bit. We started slow and didn't have very good execution the first couple of sets. The third and fourth sets saw a little bit more comfort for some of our younger guys.”
Calgary was led by
Chris Hoag with 14 kills in 30 swings. He had three service aces, four digs and three block assists.
Allen Meek (had 11 kills in 25 chances with seven digs and three block assists.
Jay Blankenau had 39 assists.
TRU was led by Brad Gunter (1st year, right side, Courtenay, BC). In his CIS debut, Gunter had 13 kills in 34 opportunities and added six digs and one block assist. Third-year setter Colin Carson had nine digs, two solo blocks, one block assist and 33 assists for TRU. Chris Osborne had nine kills while Aleks Saddlemyer chipped in with eight kills.
The two sides renew acquaintances Saturday night in the series closer, which goes at 7:45 p.m. Saturday night, live on CanadaWest.tv.
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