Marauders lose to Western in heartbreaker

The Western Mustangs were able to pull off a comeback against the Marauders on Friday night, clawing their way out of a two-set deficit to end up taking the match in 5.

The Marauders have been in that position with the Mustangs several times before, having been in a five-match thriller two out of four times last season.

Usually Mac came out of five matches with a victory, but this game would not follow suit.

After several ball control troubles on the Marauders end, the Mustangs were able to capitalize on their mistakes, and win three sets consecutively.

“We didn’t serve and pass as well as we did in the first two sets, and because volleyball is a progressive sport, when your first two contacts aren’t as clean as you want them to be, it starts to erode after that,” said head coach Dave Preston.

In the last three sets, although the Marauders kept it close, they had trouble staying consistent, and as the Mustangs applied more and more pressure, they did not have a response to it.

“My concern specifically was with how we handled that environment. I wasn’t completely satisfied with what our reaction was to that adversity,” said Preston.

“We have to make sure that when we’re faced with those adversities, that everybody is handling them the same way, and I don’t know if that was exactly the case on Friday night.”

The Marauders knew that they were in tough territory against the 2014 CIS silver medallists, and although the Marauders are currently ahead of the Mustangs in CIS top ten rankings, this does not change the fact that the Mustangs are undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with in the 2014-2015 season.

“It’s not like we cashed in our chips against a weaker opponent. They’re very, very good,” said Preston.

The reality for the Marauders is that they did not have a lot of pre-season action. The game against Western was only the fifth game the team has played.

The team’s preseason did not go exactly how the Marauders had planned, losing two games on the road to Ohio State, and only playing one other pre-season match, the Marauders have not had a lot of opportunities to apply what they have been working on in practices to a game situation.

“As we put more and more matches under our belt, we’ll be more game-tested. So we’re going to continue to stay on the path we’re on, we’re going to continue to develop our fundamentals, we’re going to continue to work through our systems and get more game-ready so that we’re confident enough to make the pushes when the pushes are required to be made,” said Preston.

Although the Marauders did not take advantage of the opportunity to win their first game of the season on home court, the team was able to recover quickly after the game, which was shown in their next match against the Windsor Lancers on the following day.

“We’re not going to harp too much on what we didn’t accomplish before, it’s what is in front of us that matters,” said Preston.

The Marauders moved on from their tough loss to beat the Lancers in three straight sets, which was a feat that Preston was particularly proud of.

“It’s very disappointing to lose your first match of the year, you only get so many firsts, and you want to take full advantage of that, and we didn’t. But more importantly, you want to recover on your missed opportunities, and we did that.”

In practices, McMaster will be looking to work on the fundamentals so that they can get back on track to reaching their full potential in matches.

The most important focus of the team, however, will not be on their opponents, what they are bringing to the game, and where they are ranked.

“Our main focus will be our side of the net,” said Preston. “Our main focus will be our solution to find every single ball that’s in front of us.”

The Marauders will get their opportunity to showcase what they can do on Oct. 24 and 25 in the Burridge Gym against the Ryerson Rams and Toronto Varsity Blues.