Underdog Dinos claim national title

The Dinos receive their trophy and CIS banner. [Andrew Bucholtz photo; check out my Facebook profile for more low-quality pictures from the tournament, to be posted Monday night.]

The Calgary Dinos have come a long way in a week. On March 6, they lost a five-set thriller to the Trinity Western Spartans in the Canada West semifinals. They went on to beat Thompson Rivers in straight sets in the bronze-medal match and entered the nationals this week as the sixth seed.

From there, though, things only got better for them; they knocked off the No.3 Dalhousie Tigers in a close five-set match in the quarterfinals, then beat the No.2 Alberta Golden Bears in a five-set semifinal battle and finally got revenge on the Spartans with a four-set victory in the gold-medal match.

Trinity Western head coach Ben Josephson said the Spartans didn't play as well as they could have, but the Dinos turned in a stellar effort.

"A lot of things weren’t quite working the way we wanted, but any time you play a good team, they take you out of a lot of the things you do well," he said. "They made a couple more plays than we did."

Josephson said the Dinos' blocking and passing game in particular was difficult to beat.

"They’re just a really good, stable blocking team," he said. "I felt like our guys were hitting the ball nice and hard, but their blocks slowed it down. They scrambled to the ball real well. I don’t think we matched their defensive intensity in the first half of that match."

Some underdogs in a final would embrace a us-against-the-world mentality, but Dinos' head coach Rod Durrant said his team was confident despite their low seed.

"We didn’t think the seeds meant anything," he said. "We were happy to be here and we knew we had a shot at winning."

Durrant said the talent is pretty evenly spread at the top of CIS volleyball, which means that whoever gets hot at the right time can claim a title.

"I felt everyone coming into the tournament had a chance to win it," he said. "There was no clear-cut favourite."

Durrant attributed his team's success to their self-confidence.

"They believed and they performed as best as they could when they needed to," he said. "I’m so proud of this group of guys. It’s tough to describe."

Durrant said the Dinos showed their ability to battle through adversity.

"They kept believing and kept playing," he said. "To go back to the quarterfinal, we were down 2-0 and they kept believing. To finalize it the way we did is so rewarding."

I've written a lot this weekend about the advantages of facing tough league competition (and conversely, the disadvantages of an easier league). Durrant buys that theory. He said he figures a tough regular-season schedule set his team up well for the nationals.

"Every weekend’s a battle in Canada West," he said. "I think it prepares us very well for this championship. I do think it has a lot to do with it, and I think it’s because there’s a tremendous commitment by the athletes in this conference, and coaches around this conference just prepare their guys. I think we win as a conference."

Durrant's team will experience a fair bit of attrition this summer, as they have several fourth- and fifth-year veterans leaving. He isn't concerned about that yet, though. Instead, he's happy to celebrate a national championship with his veterans (who dumped a bucket of Gatorade on him after the trophy presentation).

"I’m very excited they went out as national champions," he said. "We’ll worry about next year maybe tomorrow."

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Trinity Western - Calgary (gold medal) live blog

This one's for all the marbles. It's an all-Canada West final at the CIS men's volleyball championships here in Kamloops, with the Trinity Western Spartans taking on the Calgary Dinos. Join me in the live blog below!

Alberta - Laval (bronze-medal game) live blog

It's the first game of the medal round at the CIS volleyball nationals in Kamloops, featuring the No.2 seed Alberta Golden Bears and the No.1 seed Laval Rouge et Or. The game can be seen at SSN Canada. Join in the live blog below!

Queen's - Thompson Rivers live blog

The first action of the day at the CIS men's volleyball tournament sees Queen's taking on the hometown Thompson Rivers WolfPack in the fifth-place game. Join in the live blog below!

TWU downs Laval in a thriller

That has to be one of the most exciting volleyball games I've ever seen. Both teams came out slugging early, but Laval looked to have the upper hand when they won a close third set 25-23 to take a 2-1 lead. Trinity Western refused to quit, though, winning the last two sets to advance to the final. The final set, which ended 20-18 in favour of the Spartans, could have gone either way, but in the end, they did enough to hang on.

Steven Marshall had a tremendous night for the Spartans, finishing with 25 kills. He said the whole team took their game to a new level.

"It was amazing," he said. "It was the best game we’ve had this season. I think we played as a team, as a whole. We helped each other all game."

Trinity Western demonstrated a great deal of depth; Marshall and Rudy Verhoeff (11 kills, 10 blocks) were both huge in the Spartans' comeback, with other players like Marc Howatson (16 kills) and Josh Doornenbal (9 kills) coming up big when called upon. By contrast, Laval relied mostly on the efforts of star hitter Frederic Desbiens (22 kills), with some support from Karl De Grandpre (14 kills); both had solid games, but the rest of the team didn't contribute too terribly much, which may have caused some fatigue down the stretch. Marshall said depth has been a strength for Trinity Western all season.

"We’ve always had tons of guys coming in and helping out," he said. "It’s made a huge difference all season."

I'd imagine the Spartans' experience playing tough teams all year also helped with their resurgence. Marshall said they've played a lot of close games all year, which gave them confidence after they fell behind two sets to one.

"We always felt we were going to get it," he said. "We knew this was going five from the beginning"

Interestingly, this sets up yet another final between Canada West teams. Before last year, when Laval finished second, Canada West had swept the medals seven straight years. The conference has also won 37 of the 43 national championships, and the last 15 straight titles; that streak is safe with Trinity's victory.

As I suggested this afternoon, I don't think it's necessarily an inherent talent advantage that makes western teams so dominant these days; that used to be a larger part of it, but the increased numbers of athletic entrance scholarships in other provinces and the increased role of national recruiting have helped to diminish that.

The little advantages remain, though. Trinity plays in an incredibly competitive conference, where they went 11-7 in the regular season this year. Seven of the teams in the final Top 10, including Trinity, were from the West; they face six of those teams in league play, which has to help sharpen their edge. By contrast, Laval was ranked #1 in that top 10, but they were the lone Quebec entrant; their best league competition was probably the Montreal Carabins, who lost in three sets to Laval in their first match at nationals and in four sets to Queen's in their second match. The rest of the Quebec league was even further behind. That doesn't take anything away from Laval; they certainly proved that they deserved to be at nationals and probably deserved the #1 ranking they received heading in. It does perhaps go towards explaining how an 11-7 Canada West team can upset a dominant Quebec team; those little edges you pick up from facing top competition all year can make a significant difference.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

The Battle Of Alberta: Golden Bears vs. Dinos

In an all-Alberta matchup, the University of Alberta Golden Bears will take on the University of Calgary Dinos in tonight's late semi-final. The winner will go on to face Trinity Western in tomorrow's gold-medal game, with the loser taking on Laval for third place. Watch the game on SSN and join in the live blog below!

Trinity Western - Laval live blog

It's the first semifinal of the CIS men's volleyball championships, featuring the fourth-seeded Trinity Western Spartans and the top-ranked Laval Rouge et Or. Catch the webcast at SSN Canada and join the live blog below!

Conferences, small edges and Canada West

Earlier this week, I wrote a long piece about how the increased availability of athletic entrance scholarships and the increased focus on national recruiting has started to help schools outside of Canada West start to catch up in sports traditionally dominated by western teams. Canada West does still have some edges in scholarships, infrastructure and coaches, but I think the gap is beginning to close a bit.

However, you wouldn't know it from this weekend's CIS volleyball national championships. As I wrote in a feature for the Queen's Journal back in 2008, men's volleyball has been solidly dominated by Canada West since its inception, with the conference claiming the last 15 straight national titles and 37 of the 43 championships that have been held. That pattern hasn't shown any signs of changing so far; there are four Canada West teams here, making up half the field; No. 2 Alberta, No. 4 Trinity Western, No. 6 Calgary and No. 7 Thompson Rivers. Three of the four won their opening games; the only one to lose was Thompson Rivers, who played against Alberta, and they bounced back with a three-set thumping of Dalhousie this afternoon.

The Queen's - Trinity Western game was supposed to be close; that's what you'd expect from a four-versus-five game. It wasn't, though; the Gaels had their moments, but the Spartans won in straight sets. When I spoke to Queen's players and coaches after the game for my recap piece for the Journal, I got some very interesting comments. Consider this one from libero Alex Oneid, who said Trinity Western's speed was one of the main things that threw the Gaels off.

"Their rate of play was pretty similar to ours," Oneid said. "This year, even some of the better teams in the OUA had a slower pace. We came here and we basically saw us, with a little more game experience."

Head coach Brenda Willis offered some thoughts along the same theme.

“I’m not sure things went wrong so much as they went right for Trinity Western," she said. "The tempo of thie offence is something we don’t face in Ontario. We also don’t face that level of serving very much, and I don’t think we passed well enough to run the offence we’re capable of running. They face other teams at that tempo, at that level of serving all the time and we don’t."

Willis said the difference between the teams wasn't so much physical talent as experience against good competition.

"Physically, we matched up very well," she said. "I don’t think we’re too small or too slow. We need to be a little more skilled perhaps and a little more in sync."

Willis said the nationals are a learning experience for the Gaels, with a chance to play some high-calibre teams. She said they have the physical talent to compete with western teams, but they need to work on the small elements of the game against elite competition if they're going to become more precise.

"The biggest thing for us is to go through this tournament learning and getting better so we can go home and realize there’s no big gap, it’s just about getting better in all the areas; faster offence, a little more aggressive defence," she said. "It’s just the little things."

I talked about the importance of regular-season competition a bit in my piece on Dalhousie last night, but I thinks it deserves some more coverage. Queen's doesn't have Dalhousie's problem of not facing high-level teams all year during the regular season, as there are some very good teams in Ontario, including McMaster, Western and Guelph. However, for every match against those teams, they have one against weaker teams like RMC (0-20 this year) or York (4-16). It's tough to learn much from those games, and it's easy to pick up bad habits in them.

Canada West has its own stragglers, like Regina (0-18 this year) and UBC (4-14), but those programs have been good at times, and they're far more the exception than the rule. It's pretty close at the top of Canada West; Thompson Rivers finished sixth during the regular season with a 10-8 mark, but they've done very well at the nationals so far. By contrast, Ontario features less elite teams and many more middling teams. Moreover, the other top-level Ontario teams all have the same problem of playing down to their competition, not being refined by it, so they're not as elite as they might be if they played in a tougher league. This suggests that in CIS sports, it might not be enough just to build your own program into a powerhouse if your league remains at a lower level.

In some ways, this difference might particularly show up in volleyball, where there are so many little changes in serving, passing and attacking styles that can make a big difference. If you're not exposed to the different styles of top teams throughout the season, it's much more difficult to quickly figure out a way to counter them at nationals. There are exhibition tournaments and such that can help with this, and the good programs do make an effort to expose their players to as much competition as possible, but that doesn't make up for a regular season of night-in and night-out battles.

There will be an interesting test of this idea in the 6 p.m. (Pacific) game tonight, with top-ranked Laval taking on No. 4 Trinity Western. Laval is an excellent team and a very physically skilled one. They've also had success at the national level; they finished second in last year's championships, breaking Canada West's streak of seven straight medal sweeps. However, they play in a much weaker league than the Spartans, who were tested night in and night out. Laval will be favoured, and there's a good chance they'll win, but if Trinity does pull off the upset, I'd venture that the strength of their schedule might be part of the reason why.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Thompson Rivers - Dalhousie live blog

It's the second consolation final at the CIS men's volleyball championships in Kamloops, featuring the hometown Thompson Rivers WolfPack against the Dalhousie Tigers. Winner plays Queen's for fifth tomorrow; loser's tournament ends here. Join me in the live blog below. This will be a little more infrequently updated than some of the others, as I'm working on some other posts as well, but I should still have regular score and action updates.

Queen's - Montreal live blog

It's time for the first consolation semifinal at the CIS national volleyball championships in Kamloops, featuring Queen's against the Montreal Carabins. Join in the live blog below!

Dalhousie's dominance: is it really a good thing for them?

I was paging through the Dalhousie Tigers' media guide earlier and came across quite an interesting stat. The Tigers have appeared at 31 straight CIS championships. They've won 24 straight Atlantic University Sport championships and 30 of the last 31 (presumably, their other appearance came either when they were hosting or when the AUS wound up with two spots). Current head coach Dan Ota has been there for 11 years and won 11 straight AUS championships; he's also been named AUS coach of the year nine times in that span. Clearly, AUS volleyball is Dalhousie and everyone else.

The question, though, is if that dominance is a good thing or a bad thing for the program. On the plus side, that probably gives them first crack at any Maritime recruits who want to stay in the region. Their almost-guaranteed spot at nationals also can be a significant recruiting advantage, allowing them to draw more national recruits than they probably would otherwise; only three players on the current roster are from the Maritimes, with two from Halifax and one from Newfoundland. The rest are spread out everywhere from Victoria, B.C. to Cobourg, ON. Dalhousie does have a good volleyball program and would draw people even without the guaranteed berth, but it certainly can't hurt their recruiting efforts.

Where it might hurt them, though, is in quality of competition. I'll have more on this later, including Queen's coach Brenda Willis' thoughts on the matter, but for now, suffice it to say that the opponents you play before nationals can make a big difference to how you do once you're there. It's not just in terms of their physical talent, although that plays a role; it's easier to fall into lazy digging habits if the spikes and serves aren't coming hard, and you don't have to execute a hit perfectly if you're up against a shorter blocker.

What may be even more important is the systems. Volleyball is an incredibly tactical game, full of different passing schemes, setting and serving techniques and attack routes, and even minor variations on these can present a problem. If you're playing less-skilled teams all the time, you're probably not going to see as much variety, and you'll be less prepared for what might come your way. Even small changes can have a big effect; a common theme that came up in my conversations with Queen's players and coaches after their loss today was that Trinity Western's fast pace poseed a huge challenge for them. If you're not seeing those kind of different systems from elite competition, you might struggle to adjust to them.

Tonight's game may prove a case in point. The Tigers were seeded third this year and came into the tournament with a strong roster, but after winning the first two sets against Calgary, they started to struggle. The Dinos fought back well, winning sets three and four handily and then knocking off Dalhousie 16-14 in a tight fifth set. Would things have been different if Dalhousie had faced tougher competition throughout the year? We'll never know, but I'd guess they might have.

How has this worked out for Dalhousie overall, though? Well, their results show the same combination of positives and negatives discussed earlier. They've never won a national championship, but they finished second in 1997. Their last four finishes are fourth, fifth, fourth and fifth which seems about right. They always make the dance, and they're rarely the worst team there, but they never seem to quite pull it off, and that lack of elite competition might be a reason why. Still, as a fan or an athletic director, you can make a good case that being there every year might do more for your program and your national profile than making it to nationals a few times during that span and winning once.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Live blog: Thompson Rivers vs. Alberta

The next game in the CIS men's volleyball championships sees the hometown Thompson Rivers WolfPack, seeded seventh, taking on the Canada West champion Alberta Golden Bears, seeded first. It should be an interesting one. Tune in on SSN Canada and join in the live blog below!

Live blog: Queen's vs. Trinity Western

After top-seeded Laval opened the CIS volleyball championships with a three-set thumping of Trinity Western, we're now set for what should be an entertaining second match. Queen's, who took the Ontario title in an extremely close five-set thriller against Guelph last weekend, enters the nationals as the lone OUA representative. They're seeded fifth. They'll battle the fourth-seeded Trinity Western Spartans, who came up just short in their conference final against the Alberta Golden Bears. Both teams have a lot of young talent, which should make this one thoroughly interesting. The game will be streamed live at SSN Canada; watch it there and follow along with the live blog here! We'll get underway at 6 Eastern/3 Pacific.

Checking in from the CIS volleyball championships

The CIS men's volleyball championships are underway out here in Kamloops, but there aren't any surprises so far; top-seeded Laval is up one set to nil on eighth-ranked Montreal. Later today, we'll have Queen's taking on Trinity Western at 3 p.m. Pacific, followed by the host Thompson Rivers WolfPack against the Alberta Golden Bears at 5 and the Calgary Dinos and Dalhousie Tigers at 8. The plan is to live blog all of those games, as well as chipping in a few other previews and recaps here and there. Check back here often for the latest.