He was named as the OUA West Player of the Year on Tuesday, and four days later, Matt Passalent put his skills on display to pull his team to victory and a seventh consecutive berth in the OUA title match.

Passalent set a new career single match high with 23 kills Saturday, as the Marauders battled through a difficult 25-17, 25-19, 19-25, 25-23 win over the Windsor Lancers to open the OUA Final Four in Kingston.

With the win, the Marauders qualified for the U SPORTS Championship for the seventh consecutive season.

Leading the way offensively for McMaster, Passalent hit .390 in the win and committed just five errors on 46 attempts.

Left sides Craig Ireland and Andrew Richards provided a healthy dose of secondary scoring behind Passalent with 14 and 13 kills respectively, while David Doty racked up a total of 52 assists through four sets.

After a stretch of side-out volleyball to open the first set, the Marauders began to open a decisive lead midway through it, and carried a six-point advantage into the technical timeout after a Lancers service error.

Windsor's fortunes did not improve from there, and coach James Gravelle burned his second timeout of the set when Ireland successfully floated a tip into the back corner to give the Marauders a 19-12 lead. That proved to be too steep a hill for the Lancers to climb, and after a few vintage out-of-system kills from Passalent helped bring up set points at 24-17, Tom Williams dispatched the first of those with an ace off the bench.

Trailing early in the second set, and forced to a timeout at 8-5, the Marauders battled back to level it at 12 after Ireland polished off a long rally by painting the back line with a spinning kill. By the technical timeout, McMaster had a two-point lead, setting up a dramatic conclusion to the set.

The newly-crowned OUA West Player of the Year, Passalent showed off his skills in a clutch moment, following a kill with a ferocious ace to bring up set points for the Marauders at 24-22. Once again, McMaster was opportunistic and took the set at the first opportunity, as Ireland tooled the block on the left for 25-22.

McMaster strove to find time for bench players in the third, inserting Pearson Stiller at setter and Nathan Delguidice at right side, but saw their chemistry suffer as a result. The Marauders trailed by five at the technical timeout and the Lancers powered on from there, forcing Preston to call his second timeout stuck eight at 19-11.

Bringing Doty and Passalent back into the mix late on proved to right the ship, and the Marauders fought back to respectability in the third, but it was too little, too late, and Windsor forced a fourth with a kill through the middle on their second set point.

Early signs were good for McMaster in the fourth, as Bennett Swan sealed up the interior of a double block to push the Marauders ahead 6-2. But Windsor fought back immediately to win the next five points, and pulled ahead as the teams raced to the technical timeout.

A fifth set seemed like a distinct possibility as Windsor pulled ahead 21-19 after a McMaster scramble yielded only a loose pass into the scorer's table. But a timely service appearance from Richards helped claw the Marauders ahead, and after bringing up a single match point at 24-23, the defending conference champions snatched the match when Swan dispatched an overpass with authority.

NEXT UP: McMaster will look to defend its Forsyth Cup title for a record seventh consecutive season on Sunday, when they battle the winner of Saturday's second semifinal between Queen's and Toronto. That match is slated for first serve at 3:00 p.m. and can be seen live on OUA.tv.