Kings 3 Rattlers 1
The RDC Kings did what they had to do against the Medicine Hat College Rattlers.
It wasn’t the prettiest at times, but the Kings earned a four-set win (25-14, 22-25, 25-16, 25-22) over the Rattlers and extended their win streak to nine straight Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference matches.
“The first (set) was great, it was exactly what we game-planned for in terms of putting some significant service pressure on them and forcing them into some errors and playing fairly clean volleyball, limiting the amount of free points we gave them,” Kings head coach Aaron Schulha said.
“Then we did the exact opposite in the second. We gave them, I want to say 16 of their points… if we could have cleaned it up at the end of the second, we could have snuck that one out.”
Second-year Australian outsider hitter Patrick Toze had a monster game for the home side, putting away a match-high 21 kills on the night. He only had three hitting errors and also had two aces in the win. Rookie Carter Hills had another strong effort with 16 kills on 26 attempts, along with four aces and seven digs.
Your @CollegiateSpMed #PlayerOfTheGame: @rdckingsvb 1️⃣1️⃣ Patrik Toze@MHC_Rattlers 0️⃣2️⃣ Dexter Mackie#ACAC pic.twitter.com/QJLCASCV9l
— RDC Athletics (@rdcathletics) February 22, 2020
As a team, the Kings had 10 services aces in the match but struggled with 18 errors, a high number for four sets against a team that didn’t have the best passing game.
“Ten aces, in theory as a coach you say an ace to error ratio of 1/2 is usually O.K. We’re within that, but we missed 18 serves in four sets, that’s way too many. Especially against a team that fights it on receive like these guys. Against a team that is not the best receiving team, we should be closer to 10 misses in four sets,” Schulha said.
“Going back to the amount of free points we gave them, I thought we gave them way too many throughout the course of the match. A lot of that was missing serves and attack errors, especially in the second set and parts of the third and fourth. A wins a win and we knew they were better than their record. It’s not the complete match we wanted.”
Dexter Mackie, who had seven kills for the Rattlers, was their player of the game.
Combined with the Lethbridge College Kodiaks loss last week, the Kings temporarily took over first in the ACAC South. The Kodiaks still have two matches remaining, while the Kings have only one.
RDC will finish the ACAC regular season Saturday against the Rattlers, with the game expected to start at 3 p.m.
Email sports tips to Byron Hackett
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