HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – Playing in their second to last match of an 11-game preseason road trip, the Spartans beat Dalhousie 3-1 (25-16, 25-20, 22-25, 25-17) Sunday afternoon.

Ryan Sclater (Port Coquitlam, B.C.) led Trinity Western with 17 kills, while Aaron Boettcher (Surrey, B.C.) had 14 kills and 10 blocks from the middle.

The win improves TWU's record to 8-2 on its Eastern Canada tour and 10-2 overall in the preseason.

"It was a good game," said Spartans coach Ben Josephson. "Our opponents started figuring us out a little bit more every set as they got more comfortable with what we were doing. They have a really good coach in Dan Ota and we knew they would be challenging as the match wore on and they were. They are a really good receiving team and they run a really fast offence.

"The lessons that popped up were that we didn't maintain our good decision-making consistently in the third set and we gave up a couple of big runs, which was the difference in that set. We did a better job of that in the fourth and made better decisions in all of the situations, which allowed us to play much steadier. The other one was that were working through how fast we make adjustments. We're a little bit slow adjusting to the things our opponents are doing, especially once we identify the problems. I thought we did a better job of adjusting to the problems in the fourth set. But overall, it was a pretty good match."

The Spartans wrap up their road trip with a rematch against Dalhousie Monday at 2 p.m. (AT).

-TW-