The No. 7 ranked University of Saskatchewan Huskies battled to the bitter end, holding on to knock off the No. 8 ranked University of Winnipeg Wesmen 3-2 (25-15, 22-25, 25-20, 23-25, 15-13) Saturday night in Saskatoon.

With the victory, Saskatchewan improves to 6-6 on the season and enters the semester break at .500 and seventh in the Canada West standings. Winnipeg falls to 7-5, good for fifth place in the conference.

The fifth and final set went down to the wire with the teams locked at 10. Kills from Jordan Nowakowski and Andrew Nelson and a Winnipeg attack error had the Huskies up three. The Wesmen countered with a pair of points before the Huskies finished it off with a Nowakowski kill.

Saskatchewan took the first set handily thanks to a 10 point spurt. With the set tied at five, the Huskies were efficient and took advantage of Winnipeg errors to jump ahead 15-5.

In the second, Winnipeg got out to an early lead before the Huskies would work their way back in to tie it at 21-21. A David Bommersbach kill would give the Wesmen the two point win.

The Huskies took their first lead of the third set at the technical timeout and continued to slowly pull away from their en route to a 25-20 win.

Winnipeg led the fourth set from start to finish with the Huskies managing to tie it up a couple of times, but were unable to jump ahead.

Nowakowski led the Huskies with 17 kills on the night and added seven digs. Tyler Epp was big in the middle with five blocks. Libero Mathew Erickson tallied 12 digs.

David Bommersbach put up a match-high 20 kills for the Wesmen. Brendan Black finished the night with four blocks, while Josh McKay and Logan Brennan each notched 10 digs.

Winnipeg opens up second half play on January 8-9 when they travel to Edmonton to face the MacEwan Griffins.

Files from University of Saskatchewan Sports Information