QUEBEC CITY - They came. They battled. They fought in defeat. The Brandon Bobcats men's volleyball team dropped a heart-breaking five set match 3-2 (21-25, 26-24, 24-26, 23-25, 15-13) to the host Universite Laval Rouge et Or Saturday night in the CIS men's volleyball national championship semi-final.
 
The loss means Brandon has no chance to bring home a national championship, as was the goal for the #1 seeded Bobcats entering the tournament.
 
“We came here to win. That was the goal. That was the plan, so everybody is pretty crushed right now,” says Grant Wilson.
 
Playing in a front of a hostile crowd is never easy, as the 3,000 plus faithful fans of Laval tried making a difficult environment. That didn't seem to faze the Bobcats as they led most of the match.
 
“I think we did well to deal with the crowd, and the atmosphere and the emotion that they played with, but unfortunately we just couldn't deal with it long enough to execute our game plan all the way through,” says Brendan White, who finished the contest with seven kills and six blocks.
 
The Bobcats picked up the first set by only four points, which was also the largest margin of defeat of all five sets. The two teams exchanged points for the next four sets until Laval ran to a 14-11 lead in the fifth. The Bobcats refused to go away though, forcing Laval to just a two point victory in the final frame. Despite the exchange in points, errors and serving seemed to cause problems for the Bobcats through-out the match.
 
“Serving has been our strength all year, and tonight it wasn't,” says head coach Grant Wilson. “We missed way too many serves and didn't put them under pressure at all., which allowed them to run their offense.”
 
Brandon will now play the Western Mustangs for bronze at 1:00 pm ET (12:00 pm CT). The bronze medal match will be shown in Brandon University's Healthy Living Centre, just as every previous Bobcat match in the national championship to this point.