Box Score TORONTO, Ont. – After last weekend's success against RMC and Queen's, the Western Mustang's men's volleyball team made their way to Toronto on Saturday to take on Ryerson and defeated in three sets with scores of 25-21, 25-17, 25- 23.
With the win the Mustangs move to 12-3 on the season, good for third place in the OUA standings and only one game behind the second-place Waterloo Warriors. Ryerson falls to 9-6 on the year and occupy fifth in the OUA.
The Mustangs commanded the court the entire match with a 24.4% kill percentage compared to Ryerson's 7.6%. Western's dominated on offense with a total of 39 kills and their defense was also strong, as they added 23 digs in the match.
The first set saw Western come out strong, taking the lead at the onset before the two teams found themselves equalized at 19 points. Despite letting the Rams back in, the Mustangs were able to trudge on and take the set 25-21.
In the second set, the Mustangs gained early control once again and were able to hold the Rams at bay despite substituting new players in after a technical time-out. The set ended at 25-17 in Western's favour, as the Rams found themselves unable to climb back into the game.
Western maintained their dominance in the third set to close out the match, despite registering their lowest kill percentage of the match at 20.7%. In total, the Mustangs registered 12 digs on defense in the set while finding themselves on the right side of five attack errors by Ryerson.
Western's offense was led by
Phil James, who put up 11 kills in the commanding victory. Notable contributions also came from
Garrett May and
Justin Scapinello, who also added nine kills and seven kills, respectively. The strong Mustangs defense was headed by
Matt Silver with eight digs and James who lead the team with five blocks.
On Ryerson's end, Stefan Ristic made the largest defensive impact on the afternoon for the Rams, putting up seven digs on the day. Robert Wojcik had the most kills of the afternoon for Ryerson with a total of six.
The purple and white remain in Toronto to take on the University of Toronto's varsity blues on Sunday, January 26 at 12:00 p.m.
