WINNIPEG – Manitoba hit .395 as a team with just nine attack errors compared to 18, and a .091 hitting percentage for Saskatchewan in a 3-0 Bisons sweep at IGAC on Friday (25-19, 25-20, 25-13).
 
The Herd are now 3-0 since the winter break concluded, leapfrogging over the Huskies for sixth in the Canada West standings at 7-6. Saskatchewan fell to 7-8. Both teams play again tomorrow at 4 pm.
 
Eric Ogaranko led the way with 12 kills and had a season-best .524 hitting percentage, while Sammy Ludwig had 38 assists, and four different Bisons hit above .400.
 
Manitoba was lethal at the line, with seven total aces, paced by two from Ogaranko. Saskatchewan got three aces and ten total points from Emmett Graham, but for the most part the hosts kept a lethal Huskies attack – paced by Graham – at bay.
 
"In general, keeping Emmett under 20 percent [hitting], I don't think any other team has done that," said Bisons head coach Arnd 'Lupo' Ludwig.
 
"I think we served well, we played well. We put a lot of pressure on them. We scouted [Graham] pretty good. He still makes his points, but we got him really thinking. We got a couple of touches, a couple of blocks, he hit two or three balls out. We didn't really block him, I think once maybe, but we slowed him down often enough. Emmett is the guy who usually bails them out, and we were prepared for that, and we executed."
 
While Graham had notable moments at times, he was held to seven kills on 21 attacks, hitting just .190. It was notable, as the left-handed right side entered play second in Canada West with 4.07 kills per set, while his 164 kills entering the contest were third in the conference.
 
"We watched a lot of film on [Graham]. We tried to emulate, as best we could, the speed of his set and his swings in practice," added Ogaranko, a fellow left-handed hitter.
 
"We have three lefties on our team, me, Nic [Carter] and Karil [Dadash Adeh], so we were emulating that as best we could just to get our block and our defence prepared for it. That was definitely the main thing."
 
Hitting percentage told the story in set one. Manitoba hit .375, while the Huskies operated at just .111 with six errors compared to three for the Herd.
 
Owen Weekes opened the game with a smash from the left, and he kept that momentum going all set, with five kills and a .400 hitting percentage along with an ace, while Ludwig dished out ten assists.
 
Service pressure was a factor in the attacking totals. The Herd forced Saskatchewan to pass from behind the attack line often, allowing their block to get established, including a triple block from Weekes, Jonah Dueck and Dadash Adeh.
 
Manitoba led throughout the set, including 15-10 at one point. The Huskies made a push with a 5-0 run to tie the game, but the Herd went on a run of their own to win the set by six.
 
Graham led the U of S with three kills in the first, including a c-ball run that began Saskatchewan's five-point surge, however costly errors affected the Huskies down the stretch.
 
Ogaranko helped blow the second set wide open for Manitoba. Up by one at 15-14, the Herd went on a 5-0 run with the crafty lefty at the service line. His tricky assortment of serves forced the Huskies to once again scramble on the attack, allowing Manitoba to establish their block.
 
Heppner and Ludwig combined for back-to-back assisted blocks from the right during the five-point push, as Manitoba won the set 25-20. After two, the hosts had 13 assisted blocks, compared to four for the visitors.
 
"Serving is a big part of our team identity. I think this year we've kind of had to switch our focus from thinking we always need to go and get an ace. We're one of the best blocking teams in the country. We've been kind of saying if we can get teams out of system and trust our block defence, that's a win for us, and an ace is just a bonus," added Ogaranko.
 
"Having that mindset this year has really been helping us in limiting some of those errors we've made in the past, while still putting the pressure on other teams."
 
Noah Opseth, who had 23 assists for Saskatchewan, got the middles involved early in set three. Mathieu Methot put down his fourth kill of the game for the Huskie's third point, and he and fellow middle Jacob Baird combined for ten kills, with Baird hitting .833 overall.
 
But Manitoba's service pressure, and a notable performance from Ogaranko were too much.
 
Dadash Adeh and Ludwig had aces for Manitoba, who hit .462 in the third, while the visitors hit in the negatives, continually running around the court due to the play from the hosts at the line.
 
Ogaranko went off for three straight kills, one from the pipe and two from the left, and Manitoba had eight kills in their first 11 points overall, cruising to a 12-point set win.
 
"Overall in the third, we had their mental down in the gutters. You could get the sense that they weren't super confident," said Ogaranko.
 
"We took the energy out of them. The pipe in the third set worked awesome. When we do a good job of running our middles early in the game, and running our left and right side, it's a hard run to stop when we go to the pipe and save it for the end. It was great setting by Sammy and a great overall team win."