REGINA – In a match that anyone in attendance won’t soon forget, the Regina men’s volleyball team came away with a 3-1 win over No. 8-ranked Brandon in a Canada West match on Friday night at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport.
It was plainly obvious from the beginning of Friday’s match that it was a battle of two evenly matched squads. Brandon took a 25-23 win in a first set that featured 12 tie scores and five lead changes, and the Cougars replied with a 26-24 win in the second set.
In the third set, Regina and Brandon battled back and forth for just under three-quarters of an hour, and finally an Andrew Nelson kill and a combination block by Nelson and Joel Colter broke a 40-40 tie and gave the Cougars an epic 42-40 win in the third. The set featured a staggering 35 tie scores and 15 lead changes and broke the record for the longest set in conference history. The old record was 74 points, set back on Nov. 19 of last year when Calgary defeated Brandon 38-36 in a second-set thriller.
Nelson’s 29 kills and 64 attacks, third-year setter Caleb Eschbach’s 61 assists, and rookie libero Jacques Borgeaud’s 25 digs are all the most by a Canada West player in a single match this season, the third-most ever.
Not to be overlooked is the contribution of fifth-year outside hitter Jamie Wilkins, who had a career-high 23 kills in the win. Andre Borgeaud had nine kills, 10 digs, and a match-high three service aces in the victory.
Four Brandon players ended up in double figures in kills, led by 15 by both Paul Robidaux and Jonathan Sloane. Sloane’s 15 kills came on just 22 attacks and the fifth-year middle blocker had no errors, giving him a .682 hitting percentage for the match to go along with his match-high seven blocks. Ben Glue had 12 kills for Brandon, while Sam Tuivai had 11 kills and four blocks in his Canada West debut.
The win moves Regina (4-5) past UBC Okanagan and into a tie for fifth place in the Canada West standings with Calgary, as the Dinos lost 3-1 to UBC on Friday. Brandon, now 2-7, moves into a tie with Winnipeg for eighth in the conference standings.
The teams will meet again at the CKHS on Saturday at 6:15 p.m.
