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BAYAMON, Puerto Rico, October 15, 2009 – Canada
pulled off a five-set victory against Dominican
Republic advancing to a semi final match against
Cuba in the NORCECA Men’s Continental
Championship. The score was 21-25, 25-22, 21-25,
25-23, 15-13 in two hours of play.
Louis-Pierre Mainville led four Canadians in
double digits with 18 points. Tim Gourlay came
from the bench to contribute 15 points and Joel
Schmuland and Stephen Gotch added 12 and 11
respectively. Dominican Jose Caceres had a
match-high 29 points and Victor Batista and
Elnis Palomino charted 21 and 13 points
respectively.
“The Dominicans played really well and it wasn’t
our best match,” said Gotch, the captain of
Canada. “There are some areas in our game that
we need to improve. It took a while to adjust
against the offense of Caceres and Batista and
Palomino also played good. Now I am looking
forward to our match against Cuba on Friday.”
“We were a little bit lucky,” said Vincent
Pichette, the coach of Canada. “We need to be
more consistent but our bench did a good job and
Gourlay came in and did a great job and also our
setter Olivier Faucher.”
“The inexperience cost our life because we
couldn’t execute in the key moments and it
destroyed us,” said Batista. “I hope this lesson
is learned by our young players and help us to
work harder to avoid those situations.”
“Many errors in the key moments,” said Jacinto
Campechano, the Dominican coach. “Our team needs
to play more matches but we also had many key
points in the hands of our more experienced
players.”
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