Friday January 14th, 2011
Full scores and review after the jump:
Full scores and review after the jump:
Full scores and review after the jump:
The Queen’s University Gael’s hosted the Lakehead Thunderwolves on Sunday afternoon. Lakehead were coming off a narrow five-set defeat to RMC the night before, while Queen’s hadn’t yet played a match in 2011. Lakehead would have to hope their warm-up the day before could push them past a Queen’s team with a significantly better record going in.
Both McMaster’s Men’s and Women’s teams are in striking position of the top teams in the OUA. While the Laurier Women’s team is on the lower half of the standings, their Men’s squad has been pushing hard recently to move up the standings. Their record of 6-4 would receive a huge boost if they could knock of the visiting Marauder’s squad. Coming off such a long layoff, any predictions of the result became difficult.
The OUA regular season started again after a brief Christmas break on Friday night. The Laurier Golden Hawks hosted one of the league’s best in McMaster. Though the two team records showed quite a disparity, the game was highly competitive and entertaining, forcing both squads and coaches to stay on their toes.
The Spartan Holiday Classic came to a close in Langley last night. The Gold Medal Match was between two nationally ranked teams, the Calgary Dinos and host Trinity Western Spartans. The Bronze Medal Match had OUA representatives, the Queen’s Gaels, up against the UBC T-Birds.
Full results after the jump:
The Gold Medal Match of the York Excalibur Tournament was contested between the Western Mustangs and the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds. The two teams met earlier in the tournament, during round robin play. UNB came out with a victory in straight sets, but even their head coach Dan McMorran acknowledged both teams were throwing varied lineups at each other. Thursday night brought out the heavyweight lineups as the OUA and AUS aggressively played it out for Gold.
After tough losses to UNB and Western respectively, the Windsor Lancers and York Lions met to decide who would take home some hardware. Both of these teams were familiar with each other after years of playing in the OUA. The bronze medal would be decided on who cared more to fight for it after the deflation of losing a chance at gold and silver. This match would also set the tone for the OUA season, set to resume in a week’s time.
Both the Warriors and the Varsity Blues came in with 2 wins, and 13 losses between them. You won't find them ranked in the CIS Top Ten, but that doesn't stop anybody from showing up with some entertaining volleyball.
RMC travelled to Toronto sporting a 2 - 4 record, Toronto at 2 - 7. However, the Varsity Blues' resume in the OUA, coupled with the extremely young RMC team and Toronto looked like the heavy favourite. Toronto, though the ugly record, did win the OUA championship just last year. They have been in the final four for a ridiculous amount of consecutive years (22, I believe). And they felt confident enough that their player leading in points, 8 Karlee Diesing, was nowhere to be found. Nor Amy Sweetman, third-year left-side.
The Week of the 19th-21st
Home
Away
Ryerson Rams at York Lions
Men’s Volleyball
3 pm at Tait McKenzie
The York Lions came into this affair with a 1 – 6 record, the Ryerson Rams at 3 – 4. It was anybody’s game on paper. The Rams looked a bit bigger, a little extra volleyball lank on their side. 11 Greg McDonald of the Rams was the only top 20 ranked player on either team as far as OUA statistics go.
Home
Away
Ryerson Rams at York Lions
Women’s Volleyball
1 pm at Tait McKenzie
Coming into the game, the expectations were very clear. Ryerson came into York’s house with a 1-6 record, fresh off tough losses (as all losses are tough) with Ottawa, then Brock. The York Lions: Undefeated, leading the East standings. Combine that with the tag team of enthusiastic announcing, and “Mitch” the hype man hosting at York, and straight sets were the bet.