CIS Nationals — Day 1

EDMONTON — One half of Day 1 at the CIS national men's volleyball championship is down. And so are one half of the Canada West conference teams.

The Thompson Rivers Wolfpack and the Winnipeg Wesmen — seeded sixth and seventh respectively — could not pull off first-round upsets and were subsequently bounced from the championship side of the eight-team draw on Friday at the University of Alberta.

The result is that the Canada West, far and away the top conference in Canada, is left with only two teams with hopes of a national title and both of them are due up in the coming hours.

The No. 1-ranked Alberta Golden Bears are on the floor warming for their match with the No. 8-seeded UNB Varsity Reds, a team that posted a losing record in the three-team AUS. No one expects this one to take too long.

Following that the No. 4-ranked Brandon Bobcats will face the No. 5-seeded Dalhousie Tigers in one a toss-up match. The Tigers lost a bit from last year's fourth-place finisher but still have the services of first-team all-Canadian Sander Ratsep, who will get much of BU's attention. Dan Ota, Dalhousie's coach, told me Thursday night that you don't have to look much further than a stat book to see that the Bobcats are led by first-team all-Canadian left side Paul Sanderson and second-team all-Canada West middle blocker Joel Small. So it could very well come down to which team does a better job of shutting down the other's big weapons.

So that's our situation here in Edmonton. Updates from the night games coming later.