Jason Hills
For MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON — Serving has been a big strength of the MacEwan Griffins through the early stages of this season, but it let them down in a big way on Saturday.
The Griffins committed 12 service errors that proved costly in a straight sets loss (25-23, 25-23, 25-14) at the David Atkinson gymnasium.
Mariah Bereziuk led MacEwan with 10 kills, while Arden Butler chipped in with nine kills. Bronwyn Ettinger recorded 20 digs in the loss for MacEwan, who are now 3-1 on the Canada West season.
Keely Anderson paced the Huskies attack with 10 kills and six digs in the win as Saskatchewan also sits 3-1 after earning the weekend split.
"We weren't ready to play. I wasn't happy at all," said Griffins head coach Chris Wandler.
"It started with the very first contact, a missed serve into the net and our serving was the biggest difference in those first two sets.
"I'm not giving them any excuses. We've talked about from Day 1, how our serve needs to be at a certain level, and our serve was not at that level today, and it let us down."
Out of the 12 service errors the Griffins committed in the loss, 11 of them were in the first two sets.
Losing both the first two sets, 25-23, it was evident that the service errors came back to bite the Griffins in a big way.
"We had 11 (service errors) going into that third set, which was five or six more than Saskatchewan had," said Wandler.
"The margins of errors in Canada West are very small, and that's the difference. We hit a few more of those points on our side, it's a different story."
MacEwan fell behind early in the opening set and had to fight and claw their way back. They've shown this year that no matter how far down they get in a set, they won't show no quit.
They did that in the opening set and after trailing by as many as seven points a few times, they were able to pull even at 17-17 after some good service play from Andi Krawec and a big kill from Butler.
But they just couldn't gain the lead and the Huskies as Saskatchewan took the first set, 25-23.
"Maybe we didn't expect them to come out as hard as they did, and we weren't able to find a way to rebound from that," said Krawec.
"Our ability to problem solve out on the court just wasn't there today."
In the second set, MacEwan got off to a better start and both teams took turns going on runs, but once the Huskies took a 20-19 lead, they were able to make that extra push to close out the set, despite the late charge from the Griffins.
MacEwan has certainly shown a strong battle level and a no quit attitude, but they didn't have much push back in the third set, as Saskatchewan held the lead the entire way and were able to go on many mini runs that the Griffins had no answer for.
Saturday's loss served as an early lesson to the Griffins.
"It's hard. Every game you play is going to be hard. It takes a certain level of investment and toughness to grind through that," said Wandler.
"I thought we had that the last few weekends, but unfortunately it didn't happen in that third set."
"They have to know that every single point they earn is going to be hard. Nothing is going to be given to them, and we weren't invested enough in that third set."
MacEwan will travel to Abbotsford, BC next weekend (Nov.3-4) to take on the Fraser Valley Cascades, before returning home to face the Brandon Bobcats on Nov. 17-18 at the David Atkinson gymnasium.
