The set win was Manitoba’s fourth in a row against UBC. But the T-Birds – who also lost the first set the night before against OUA champion Queen’s before taking the next three – remained patient and battled their way back into the game.
The T-Birds led from the jump in set two, aided by errors on four of the first six points from Manitoba, who hit -.091 overall.
Defensively, they were able to negate the potent presence of Manitoba middles Jordon Heppner and Jonah Dueck, with the former leading the conference in hitting percentage, at .455. The pair combined for seven kills in the game, but neither hit above .215, and their impact was limited at times on the attack, including in the second.
“The serving pressure was huge,” Dadash Adeh noted. “Our passing collapsed. Our strength is to run the middles when we are in system, and we were just out of system consistently.”
The key momentum shift occurred in set three, a back-and-forth battle that was easily the tightest of any in the contest.
The T-Birds surged to leads of 9-5, and 13-10, but Manitoba – like they’d done all year – were resilient and responded.
With Dadash Adeh putting pressure on UBC from the line, the Bisons took the lead 14-13, scoring three points in a row. Weekes, Dadash Adeh and Ludwig all had kills during the run.
After UBC tied the game at 14, Manitoba went on another run, scoring four of the next five, including a kill from Heppner and a solo block from Weekes. They took a 21-19 lead shortly after, but then it was UBC’s turn to flip the script.
The T-Birds scored six of the next seven points to steal the set, thanks in large part to their defence.
They were on the winning end of numerous marathon rallies, recording a combined 68 digs overall in the game, including a bevvy after the Herd’s 21st point, which ended following a Manitoba error.
A Pratt kill tied the game at 21, and one point later UBC took the lead for good after another long rally that went their way, ended once again by a Bisons error.
“We performed really well. The four or five serves that I had put them out of system and gave us free balls that we could score on, which was good. We have shown that we are capable of comebacks. We have that mental headspace. At 21-19, we had two very bad errors. We forced two attacks because of all the emotions that were going around,” reflected Dadash Adeh on the whirlwind third set.
“We just wanted to close out the game. We ended up missing the shots that we normally don’t miss. They took the lead. Momentum completely switched.”
In the fourth, UBC’s serving took over. Pratt and Gingera combined for three aces over a span of seven T-Birds points, helping to close out the game.
Despite the result, Manitoba still has plenty to play for tomorrow. They will go toe-to-toe with OUA finalist and U SPORTS Championships host Windsor at 3 PM ET, looking for their first medal at nationals in 14 years.
“We’ve been working for almost three years since I got here to make it to nationals. In this journey, we’ve had quite a bit of disappointment. I feel like those disappointments have helped fuel us and led us here, to thrive and be hungry for a win,” said Dadash Adeh.
