After entering striking distance of the top spot in all of U Sports, Brock’s women’s volleyball team dropped a match on Feb. 2nd against the McMaster Marauders, who are currently third in the OUA. Following a convincing three-set victory over the Marauders on Feb. 3rd, the Badgers maintained their top position in the OUA with a 16-2 record.
Though close from the outset, the Badgers opened with a strong first set.
For the first half of the set, the Marauders gave Brock some issues. Due to some quick scoring bursts, McMaster held a three-point lead for much of the early parts of the game, holding on to it as they went up 9-12.
From then on, Brock was able to turn the tide in their favour with some scoring bursts of their own, establishing a three-point 17-14 lead after tying the game at 13.
The Badgers nursed that lead into the final stretch, winning set one 25-20 off an Emily Foest kill, her seventh of the set, contributing to an eventual game-high 13 kills in the match.
Brock started set two up 4-1, but immediately surrendered a 5-0 run to the Marauders, putting the Badgers on their heels down 6-4. Though McMaster was able to parlay that into a more commanding 10-14 lead, another 5-0 run—this time for the Badgers—seemed to put them right back in the game, now up 15-14.
Nevertheless, after a Marauder time-out, they got right back to work reclaiming their lead and did so, going up 16-19, prompting a time-out from the Badgers.
The Badger timeout unfortunately had little effect as McMaster outscored Brock 6-4 following the call, leading to a 20-25 Marauder second-set victory.
Set three was significantly more in McMaster’s favour off the hop. Tied through the set’s first 10 points, the Marauders pulled away with a six-point run, taking a hefty 5-11 lead over Brock.
Brock didn’t have much of an answer to McMaster’s third-set explosion, which was the Marauder’s most prolific of the night, both in terms of kills (13) and attack percentage (0.226). McMasters’ 5-11 lead quickly became a more daunting 9-18 advantage that the Badgers simply could not recover from. They put in a valiant effort, scoring nine of the final 16 points, but still lost 18-25.
Now in a position that they’d never been in thus far this season—down two sets and looking to force a fifth—the Badgers again came out flat.
Tied 6-6, Brock fell victim to an 8-1 run by the Marauders who, now up 14-7, forced the Badgers to play from behind. To their credit, the Badgers did manage to pull out all the stops for a remarkable run of scoring, closing the gap to 20-21. For all their hard work, it still would not be enough, losing the set 22-25, only their second loss of the season.
The next day, the Badgers came out with a vengeance, sweeping the Marauders 3-0, though sets one and two were both tightly contested.
Tied 8-8 in set one, Brock was able to give themselves a four-point cushion going up 14-10, though struggled to build upon that. They maintained that lead as far as 17-13, but a 6-1 run by the Marauders put them up 18-19 and again on the front foot. However, thanks in part to four errors by McMaster, Brock secured set one 25-22.
McMaster came out swinging in set two and held the lead for most of the frame. Tied 11-11, McMaster was able to establish a three-point lead of 12-15 that became a 15-18 lead and then a 17-20 advantage.
Brock was able to score the next four points to take a 21-20 lead, duked it out with the Marauders for a while, and eventually were able to come away with a nail-biting 25-23 set win.
Initially, set three also promised to be just as tightly fought, with the Badgers clinging to a slim two-point lead, but up 16-14, Brock turned on the jets, outscoring McMaster 9-3 down the stretch and won the final set 25-17 in convincing fashion.
With two more games under their belt, Brock has their final two still in store. Though both are against the Waterloo Warriors in Bob Davis Gymnasium, only one is this upcoming week, landing on Feb. 10th.
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