EDMONTON — The volleyball gods can just be downright cruel sometimes.

The MacEwan Griffins had lost 18 straight games to the University of Calgary Dinos, and the Griffins looked poised to earn their first-ever win over them, as they had a 14-10 lead in the fifth set.

But the Dinos made a crazy comeback, scoring six straight points to earn a five-set victory over the Griffins (18-25, 30-28, 22-25, 25-23, 14-16) Friday night at the David Atkinson gymnasium.

Fifth-year outside hitter Alexei Walisser led the Griffins with 23 kills and seven digs, while third-year outside hitter Jefferson Morrow recorded 14 kills and 12 digs. Mitch Gorman chipped in with nine kills and 13 digs in the loss for the Griffins.

Zach Evans led the Dinos attack with 21 kills and five digs in the win for Calgary, as MacEwan fell to 0-7 on the season, and have dropped 19 straight games to the Dinos, who improved to 2-5.

After dropping the opening set, the Griffins came through with a huge second-set victory, pulling out a marathon 30-28 set win, thanks to six Walisser kills in the second set.

The Dinos responded with a strong effort and won the third set, 25-22. With their backs against the wall, the Griffins came through with a narrow 25-23 fourth-set win that saw the teams tied 13 different times.

Walisser came up with two late kills, and he and Gorman teamed up for a key block in the late stages to send the match to a fifth set.

In the fifth set, the Griffins were rolling.

Walisser connected on his first ace of the match to give the Griffins a 7-3 lead, and then a tip from Gorman and a huge block from Jonah Karsten made it 9-5, but then their mistakes started to get amplified, especially at the service line.

Both teams combined to make 46 service errors, and MacEwan needed to be aggressive at the service line to not give Dinos middle Louis Kunstmann more opportunities to do more damage, but it definitely hurt with six service errors in the fifth set.

When it came down to the final moments of the fifth set, Dinos outside hitter Liam Kuppe stepped up his service game when the Dinos needed it most.

Evans continued the run with a swing off the block and into the crowd for a kill to cut the lead to 14-12.

Then it was the Dinos D at the net. Lincoln Baines and Erik Godwin teamed up for a block to cut the lead to just one before Baines and Evans rejected another Griffins attack to knot things up and completely flip the momentum late.

After a MacEwan timeout, Godwin then closed things out with back-to-back kills to complete the comeback in a 2-hour, 23-minute marathon match.

The two teams will be right back at it Saturday in the first game of the men's/women's doubleheader. First serve is scheduled for 4 p.m.

-UC-