WINNIPEG – Some Saturday shakiness wasn't enough to derail the Winnipeg Wesmen win streak.
Fifth-year left side David Bommersbach had a team-high 19 kills and the No. 7-ranked Wesmen men's volleyball team overcame a 2-1 deficit in sets to rally and beat the Thompson Rivers Wolfpack 3-2 (23-25, 25-16, 23-25, 25-11, 18-16) Saturday night at the Dr. David F. Anderson Gymnasium inside the Duckworth Centre.
Winnipeg won its fifth straight to improve to 5-1 at home and 9-1 overall, but it didn't come easy with the Wesmen blowing a 10-6 fifth-set lead and having to rally from 16-15 down and facing a match point.
But the Wesmen found a way: with Winnipeg against the ropes, fifth-year left side Taylor Howe had back-to-back kills and third-year middle blocker Benoit Theriault won a joust at the net to finish the match and send TRU (2-6) to its sixth straight loss.
Howe finished with 10 kills, one of three Wesmen in double figures. Second-year opposite Daniel Thiessen had 16 kills.
Afterwards head coach Larry McKay was in no rush to shower praise on U of W's national power, which struggled to put away a team that hasn't won in nearly a month.
"A lot of that's luck: a ball going this way, a referee making a call that way and there's a great deal of that that goes into it," McKay said of the critical late moments. "We didn't do anything differently really in those five, six points."
After dominating the fourth, the Wesmen broke out with the first three points of the fifth set, stretched that lead to 7-2 and held an 8-3 edge at the flop.
The Wolfpack, however, didn't go down easy, at one point winning four straight to even the set at 10. Thompson Rivers took its first lead of the set after a double-hit violation against Winnipeg made it 16-15.
Thompson Rivers right side Tim Dobbert finished with a match-high 19 kills, including four in the fifth.
McKay is hopeful Saturday's scare will serve his team well as the season goes on.
"It's a tie game, and it's a lot of pressure, and it's a 'let's see how we do now,'" McKay said.
The Wesmen get back on the court for a big test against the No. 3-ranked Brandon Bobcats. The teams will play a home-and-home series that starts Tuesday November 28th in Winnipeg and wraps up Friday December 1st in Brandon.