LANGLEY, B.C. – No. 1 ranked Trinity Western defeated the No. 9 ranked Brandon Bobcats 3-0 in Friday night's Canada West Semi-Final match at the Langley Events Centre. With this victory, the Spartans advance to the Canada West Championship game, while the Bobcats will have to battle for not only bronze, but their berth to the U SPORTS Championships on Saturday.
 
The Spartans were led by an incredible performance by Mathias Elser (Calgary), who put down a game-high of 15 kills on an uber-efficient .524, while also adding six assists. Elser was also joined by high-flying middle Jackson Howe (Calgary) who made seven kills on a .700 kill rate.
 
For the Bobcats, it was first-year middle Philipp Lauter's seven kills which kept things close. Lauter combined with Brandon setter Jake Fleming, who made 19 assists throughout the match.
 
AS IT HAPPENED
The first set was dictated by an all-around masterclass from Mathias Elser (Calgary). The second-year – who doubles as an outside hitter and a setter – threw down seven kills on 10 attempts, adding three assists and a block assist as well. Although TWU held the Bobcats to a hitting percentage of .080, Jens Watt still managed to complete four kills on an efficiency of .222. The set closed at a 25-18 set victory for the Spartans.
 
Yet another efficient set took place as the Spartans hit .500 as a team. The Bobcats – who were forced to claw their way into offensive opportunities against a stingy TWU defence, were able to muster up more offensive opportunities in the second set to hit .217. Once again, Mathias Elser was incredible, making five kills while adding another three assists.
 
The third, and final set of Friday's action ended at a 25-20 line favouring the Spartans. Both the Spartans and the Bobcats had their lowest kill rates of the match in the final set, hitting .250 and .000 respectively.
 
QUOTABLE
TWU Head Coach Ben Josephson
"We took them incredibly seriously. We credited their number 15 [Philipp Lauter] so much last time that we non-intentionally discredited their team, and one of the challenges as a coach is in giving the appropriate respect, the beating they gave us in those first two sets made it easy for us to stay focussed. We did a way better job in stopping them today, though we did struggle to serve.
 
"There were two plays that might've been the play of the year. Those are two of the coolest plays I've seen all season, and they just happened to land on our biggest match yet. This group is capable of some incredible, high-end volleyball. We still need to pursue a better match to win the whole thing, but there is nothing to talk about in being better at this point, we just need to win games. There's no time for grumpiness, it's time to perform and move on."
 
About Spartan Athletics
As official members of U SPORTS, the Spartans currently compete in 13 sports in the Canada West conference, including women's and men's soccer, volleyball, basketball, hockey, cross country and track & field, as well as women's rugby sevens. TWU also competes as an independent team in men's rugby. Since TWU entered U SPORTS in 1999, the Spartans have won 12 U SPORTS team championships and 29 Canada West team championships.
 
-TW-