The Lancer men's volleyball team travelled up to Hamilton to face the No. 2 McMaster Marauders for the OUA quarter-finals in the Burridge Gymnasium. The blue and gold fell in a tight 3-2 (13-25, 25-23, 18-25, 25-21, 11-15) match on Saturday night.
 
STATS
Gustavo Siqueira led the blue and gold with 11 kills and 14 points. Luca Nastase contributed nine kill for 13 points, and Dami Alalade had 12 points. Anthony DeGirolamo had 31 assists in the loss.
 
GAME FLOW
The quarter final game opened up slowly for the Lancers as the Marauders used the home-crowd advantage to dominate on the court. Nastase would get a couple points off the block but McMaster would not make it easy and a number of attempts would be rejected. Their outside hitter, Maxime Gratton would show off his strong serves to keep Windsor on quick on their toes. The blue and gold would need to get creative if they wanted to prevent any more plays by the Marauders. McMaster took the first set 25-13 over Windsor as they looked to regain their composure.
 
In the second set, the Lancers started to better capitalize on their plays and focus more on the offensive side of the game. A huge save that had Sean Spencer dive for the ball helped to keep the ball alive and take the point in the intense back and forth affair. However, the Marauders would hold on down to the wire with a 22-22 tie, both teams fighting for each point. With the Lancers better diversifying their offense and better engaging in the set, they would bounce back to take a 25-23 set win.
 
Into the third set, both teams would battle and trade points to keep things fairly even. Siqueira made a huge impact for the team with a block to deny the Marauders kill attempt. As McMaster started to pull away into the back-end of the set, Windsor struggled to play off their powerful hits. The Marauders came back to take their lead, 25-18 in the set and 2-1 in the match.
 
The fourth set, put the work in for the Marauders as the Lancers would put all the talent they had on the court to fight for this set. Alalade got the short set in the middle to open up the blue and gold's scoring. The unbeaten McMaster Marauders were put to the test as the Lancers would take it 25-21 and tie the match 2-2 for the final decision on which team would be one step closer to the Forsyth Cup into the fifth and final set.
 
For one of the most intense and unpredictable games in the Lancers OUA season, the deciding set had McMaster and Windsor digging deep to try to play this set in their favour. The Lancers came from behind on multiple occasions to bring the game within one, but were unable to surpass the nationally ranked Marauders, falling 15-11 and 3-2 in the match.
 
In their last game of the postseason, the blue and gold would finish strong and put on a great performance with everything they had left on the court. Stay tuned to goLancers.ca for up to date information on the men's volleyball team.