Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Much like reading between the lines reveals more about a situation that first seen on the surface, reading between the score-line also has a similar effect, telling of battles within battles won, winning plays and lessons to learn.
So, while the MacEwan Griffins men's volleyball team lost in straight sets on back-to-back nights to the Alberta Golden Bears last weekend, dissecting the tape has highs, lows and everything in the middle.
In other words, there's plenty for head coach Brad Poplawski and his troops to build off of and plenty to learn from as they head out on the road this weekend with a visit to Winnipeg.
He compares the situation to MacEwan's second series of the season when they were swept by a similar powerhouse in Trinity Western, but applied lessons learned to push Calgary pretty good the following weekend.
"Reflecting back on when we played Trinity – obviously a top team – we tried to do that," he said. "What were some of the positive things from that weekend? We did bring that into the next weekend against Calgary and we played quite well. So, I'm kind of hoping for the same thing here – we can focus on the stuff we did well and keep building on that.
"Obviously, a good team like that is going to expose some weakness, so hopefully the guys come to training with 'OK, I wasn't great at this or U of A did a good job blocking me this way or serving me that way, so I can really work on those things.' "
MacEwan (2-14) will visit the Wesmen (9-7) on Friday (6:45 p.m. MT) and Saturday (4 p.m. MT, both games on Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
The last time they met – on the final weekend of the first semester in the 2018-19 season – was in an epic weekend series where each team won a five-set match. And each team had their star going full throttle; MacEwan's Max Vriend set a then-school record for kills with 28 in the second match (he has since passed it with 30 in a match against Manitoba earlier this season), while Daniel Thiessen had 40 kills over two matches.
Fast forward more than a year and the two are still dominating. Thiessen sits second in Canada West in kills per set with 3.91, while Vriend is third with 3.77.
"Their opposite's really good," said Poplawski of Thiessen. "He's carrying a ton of offence for them."
The Griffins coach is also preparing for a few wrinkles from sage veteran Wesmen head coach Larry McKay.
"Any Larry McKay-coached team is going to be difficult to play against," he said. "They move guys around. They have guys doing different things and their system's going to be really tight. I know they'll have a good plan for us, so we'll need to make sure we have a good plan for them.
"They'll give you different looks all the time."
