NIPISSING 3, NIAGARA 0

OAKVILLE, Ont. - With a season that at one-time saw them ascend to the top of the national rankings for the first time in school history, the Nipissing Lakers looked like a team that didn't want their championship hopes to be squashed, upsetting the OCAA West Division champion Niagara Knights in three sets (25-22, 25-17, 25-23).

"We played pretty well, [but] we blocked extremely well," Nipissing head coach Eric Yung said. "My big boys, my twins [Andre and Adam Leblanc] played extremely well and defensively we were good. We're getting there, we got some key players back for this weekend, just in time. I'm very happy with the win, Niagara's a very tough team."

Offensively the Lakers held advantages across the board, but it was most telling in the block department where Nipissing had a 16-6 edge - their largest total in any match this season that only went three sets.

"We knew we had a tough opponent in Nipissing and I thought they put us under a tremendous amount of pressure to start from the service line," Niagara head coach Nathan Groenveld said. "We didn't really have a response to it for the first couple of sets. Their game is serve tough, get big blocks and they executed fantastically well."

Four Lakers were in double-figures, with All-Canadian Frankie Edgecombe (15 kills, one ace, two blocks) and Adam Leblanc (10 kills, eight blocks) leading the way with a match-high 18 points, followed by Andre Leblanc (eight kills, one ace, two blocks) and Tom Podstawka (eight kills, one ace, one block).

Nipissing will advance to the semi-final where they will play the defending champions from Humber in a re-match of last year's title game.

Yung says that while the three-day format is much different from the regular season, they will try to stick to their normal routine.

"To be honest, we've just got to take it one point at a time and improve collectively as a team," he said. "We understand that there's a lot of good teams here and they're going to score points on us. It's how we react to those situations."

Niagara on the other hand still has much to play for. Not only will they move to the bronze bracket - where they will play Durham tomorrow at 1 p.m. - but they will also host the national championship tournament in two weeks.

"We don't want to leave here empty handed," Groenveld said. "It's a double-elimination [for the] bronze, so we've still got a chance at some hardware. We'll re-focus pretty quickly on that, we'll re-boot and then go at it again tomorrow."

Notes: In addition to the blocks, Nipissing had more kills (44-27), aces (3-1) and total offence (63-33) while Niagara had more digs (41-33).

Source: Sheridan I.T.