LONDON, Ont. – Following their win against Toronto, the Mustangs fought through four closely matched sets (19-25, 17-25, 25-22, 29-31) with the Ryerson Rams Saturday evening at Alumni Hall, but were unable to overtake the OUA second place team.
With the loss, Western holds a 7-7 record, good for seventh place in the OUA. Ryerson continues to hold down second place, with an 11-3 record for the regular season.
"It was a disappointing loss against Ryerson," said Brad Hockin, a first year setter for the Mustangs whose performance kept Western competitive throughout the match. "We fought really hard. We started out slow and dug ourselves into a hole going down 0-2 [sets], but I like the fight in our team. It showed a lot of character coming back and trying to force a fifth set. Unfortunately, we weren't quite able to push it - losing an extra few points in the fourth set - but we're looking forward to the rest of our season. We have some very winnable games, we're going to keep working hard at practice, and we're going to climb up and make playoffs for sure. You can count on it."
The Mustangs wasted no time in the first set, quickly pushing out four points to bring the score to 4-1. The Rams were undeterred by the early lead from the Mustangs and fought back to close the gap at 7-7. Trading points, Ryerson and the Mustangs went one for one with the score still tied at 14-14.
Finding their stride after reaching 15 points, the Rams forced the Mustangs into a time-out at 14-18 as the purple and white defence struggled.
Unable to find an effective way of avoiding Ryerson's attacks and blockers, the Mustangs called another time-out at 15-21.
Finalizing the set was a block from Ryerson's Uchenna Ofoha that brought the score to 19-25.
The second set opened up with Ryerson taking an early lead at 4-6. With Canada's top solo blocker playing for the Rams alongside Canada's third place solo blocker, Ryerson had the net controlled at all times and prevented the Mustangs from capitalizing on the power typically displayed in the front court.
Still trailing at 11-16, a series of Mustang substitutions took place to try and change the dynamic on the court. Still having trouble with the Ryerson blocks the Mustangs headed into a timeout at 16-22.
Ending on a triple block from Ofoha, Adam Anagnostopoulos, and Alex Dawson, Ryerson took the second set 17-25.
The Mustangs kicked it into high gear for the third set in order to establish a small lead over the Rams at 6-4. Hitting around the impenetrable blocks to consistently land attacks, Western held the lead at 12-10.
Unwilling to allow a set to escape them, Ryerson quickly matched the Mustang score at 12-12. At 18-18, neither team was able to shake the other.
With a narrow two point lead at 23-21, Western knocked out two points from Justin Scapinello and a Ram error to end the set at 25-22 and extend the match.
Chris Newcombe and Scapinello opened up the fourth set with a towering block that immediately shut down the Rams. Carrying over the momentum from the earlier set, the Mustangs pushed Ryerson into a three-point deficit at 12-9.
Slowly working to close the point gap, Ryerson continued to rely on Canada's top blockers to slow the stream of purple and white attacks and had the Mustangs matched at 18-18, and again at 23-23. Trading points, Ryerson eventually took the match following a Mustang error and a block from Robert Wojcik and Brandon Jordan.
"They're a good team, but you could slowly see it turning," said coach Jim Sage about the match. "Just a couple of points in the fourth set, that if we could have executed a little bit better we could have gone to a fifth set. Our goal tonight was to get to a fourth, and then force it to a fifth and see if we could reverse the pressure. It was so close to happening, and then it didn't."
Ryerson's Lucas Coleman topped the score sheet for both teams with 25 points across the four sets from 20 kills, two service aces, one solo block, and four assisted blocks. Meanwhile, Scapinello led the Mustang scoresheet with 15.5 points from 11 kills, three aces, and three assisted blocks.
The Mustangs return to the court on January 23 at Guelph, with game time set for 8 p.m. The game can be streamed online at OUA.tv.
