The University of Regina's women's volleyball team plays the second of back-to-back home weekends this Friday and Saturday as the Cougars host the Brandon Bobcats at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport.
 
Friday – 6:00 p.m. [webcast] [stats]
Saturday – 5:00 p.m. [webcast] [stats]
 
The Cougars (0-6) played their home openers last weekend against a ranked UBC squad, losing both matches and also suffering the loss of first-year setter Satomi Togawa to a lower-body injury in the third set of the Saturday match. While the extent of Togawa's injury remains unknown, she won't play this weekend and the Cougars will give fellow rookie Erika Burns the first starts of her CIS career.
 
But who will surround Burns on the floor will likely remain a bit of a mystery until game time on Friday. Head coach Melanie Sanford shuffled the lineup against UBC, using 13 of 14 players on the match roster over the course of the weekend – and only Togawa, libero Taylor Ungar, and middle Molly Wade-Cummings played in all six sets against the Thunderbirds.
 
The play of Wade-Cummings has been one of the bright spots for the Cougars this season. The fourth-year middle is fourth in Canada West with 23 blocks and recently moved past former teammate Chelsea Ziolkowski for fourth on the school's all-time list. Ungar has also been solid at libero for the U of R, as the second-year player is ranked just outside of the conference top ten in digs.
 
Brandon (1-3) is coming off its bye, having last played two weekends ago at Calgary. The Bobcats split that two-game set with the Dinos, and started out conference play with a pair of three-set losses to Trinity Western the weekend before that.
 
"Brandon has an aggressive squad that will compete and has a good middle attack," Sanford said. "They've got a very good setter in Mary Thomson, and Shanlee McLennan is a good on-court leader for them. We'll need to be aggressive and serve well, and I'm looking for a well-rounded performance from our team this weekend."
 
McLennan leads Brandon with 27 kills on the season, while Jodie Baker is hitting a team-high .340 for the Bobcats. Coached by 11th-year bench boss Lee Carter, Brandon was ranked just outside this week's CIS Top Ten with a total of 6½ votes.
 
These two teams met once during the non-conference schedule, with Brandon taking a four-set win over the Cougars in late September at the CKHS.
 
NOTES: Tori Glynn needs just one more kill to hit 600 for her career ... Glynn also needs just three more service aces to pass Meagan Onstad for sixth on the U of R's all-time list and 17 more digs to pass Tiffany Herman for sixth in that career category as well.