December 2 - After taking top-ranked Manitoba to the edge last night, the seventh-ranked UBC women’s volleyball team ran out of gas and suffered a straight sets defeat against the Bisons Saturday afternoon at War Memorial Gym (27-25, 25-22, 25-20).

Today’s match looked destined to unfold along the same lines as Friday’s five-set thriller after Manitoba (7-0), who remained undefeated in conference play with the series sweep, barely managed a 27-25 win in the first frame. Trailing by a slight margin for most of the stanza, the Thunderbirds (5-5) came back to tie it up 23-23 before staving off a pair of set points on a block and a kill from Liz Cordonier. But the Bisons proved too strong and back-to-back kills by Sarah Morrissette lifted the visitors to victory.

In the second set, UBC took a commanding 13-4 advantage and seemed ready to even the count at one set apiece. But the home side sputtered midway through, allowing their opponents to level the score at 17-17 with a 13-4 run of their own. From there it was all Bisons, as Manitoba pushed ahead by two with Ashley Voth on serve before eventually taking the frame 25-22.

“That run hurt a lot,” said UBC head coach Doug Reimer. “I think that consistency was a problem for us. In some ways we’re still experimenting with our rotation, and we play with different line-ups and that’s not always easy. We just got stuck in rotations that weren’t doing well for us. However, you can’t just do well for part of a set, and we collapsed.”

Cordonier paced the T-Birds on the attack for the second straight night, recording a match-high 13 kills and 12 digs, while Marisa Field added 12 kills and four blocks. Taylor Kitzmann led the team defensively with 16 digs.

“I think they wore us down and we were a little tired from last night,” admitted Reimer. “The bottom line is that we made too many cumulative mistakes. They play a conservative style that allows you to make those sorts of mistakes, and, unfortunately, we complied.”

Despite the fact that UBC out-hit their opponents 42 to 39 in kills and were slightly more efficient, hitting for 17 per cent compared to Manitoba’s 16 per cent, the T-Birds couldn’t convert when it counted. The home side tallied 13 service errors, while the Bisons made only three.

Morrissette led her squad with 11 kills, while Sabrina Barnes and Amy Matthews each chipped in eight. Voth had a match-high 16 digs and Barnes added 10.

Complete stats...