Jason Hills, For MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON — The MacEwan Griffins knew they had a good shot at their first win in 692 days. It was so close, they could surely taste it, but they'll have to wait at least one more day as they lost a razor-thin battle with the Mount Royal Cougars in straight sets (25-23, 25-22, 29-27) Friday night at the David Atkinson gymnasium.
Jefferson Morrow led MacEwan with 10 kills and five digs, while Ethan Nashim chipped in with seven kills and Alexander Lyndon recorded 24 assists in the loss for the Griffins, while Zach Lobdell and Chris Byam led the Cougars attack with 11 kills each in the win for Mount Royal.
"I feel like we executed our game plan early on, but we weren't picking up their shots good enough at times," said Nashim.
"We were in the right position a lot of the time, and our blocking was great, but we weren't able to execute and we allowed them to go on some runs."
MacEwan never let Mount Royal gain too big of a lead. While they were always in striking distance, throughout the three sets, they weren't able to establish any big momentum swing to wrestle the set away from the Cougars.
"We weren't able to establish any runs for ourselves. We weren't able to get that two-point lead and run with it. We were always having to build ourselves up," said Nashim.
"It's hard to play volleyball like that when you're having to play from behind a lot of the time."
After dropping the first two sets in heartbreaking fashion, it could've been easy for the Griffins to lay down and give Mount Royal the easy third set win — but they put up a big fight.
Propelled by a strong serving run by Alexei Walisser, the Griffins rallied to tie the set at 25-25, but back-to-back serving errors gave the Cougars the edge and they capitalized, earning the hard fought third set, 29-27.
Small mistakes ended up costing the Griffins dearly against Mount Royal.
"That was definitely something that was common in today's game. We'd found ways to kill our rally or our momentum," said Nashim.
"I went back and served and missed one that we needed, and Jeff (Jefferson Morrow) missed one we needed, and we didn't back up Alexei (Walliser) after he went on that really solid service run to give us that chance. That's something we will talk about. We need to be better mentally to handle that situation."
The last win for MacEwan was Jan.4, 2020, an upset victory over the University of Saskatchewan, two seasons ago.
After a tough start to the Canada West schedule against some of the nation's best teams, the Griffins felt this would be a weekend they could build their confidence up.
A straight sets loss, will certainly sting the confidence, but Nashim believes they can rebound in the rematch on Saturday.
"I feel like we underestimated the amount of power they had on the outside,' said Nashim.
"We let them kill the ball on us, and we have to be better on the offensive side of the ball. We've been working on the defensive side of the ball so much, I think we may have let it go a little bit and we have to get it back and we have to really focus on that tomorrow.
"We wanted to give a better fight than we did, but we still have tomorrow, and we have to work on some things tomorrow in video, and we have a chance to redeem ourselves."
The teams will meet again on Saturday (6:30 p.m., David Atkinson Gym, Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
