VANCOUVER - The UBC Thunderbirds were the better team from start to finish, but it was a dominant third quarter that really set the tone for their 78-48 win on Saturday over the UBC Okanagan Heat at War Memorial Gym.
The 'Birds got off to a slow start, trailing 15-14 late in the first before pulling ahead to take a two-point lead into the second quarter. Head coach
Kevin Hanson played his bench early and often on Saturday, and the reserves seemed to be hitting their stride with a quick run early in the second quarter that put UBC on top 26-15. But after the Heat came charging back to tie the game at 26, the starters went back in, and it was all T-Birds from that point on.
UBC held the Heat off the scoreboard for the last five minutes of the second quarter, and carried that momentum into the third, where they outscored the visitors 25-8 to put the game away.
"I really wanted to see if I could get our young guys a lot of minutes tonight playing together, and they made a nice little run there at the start of the second quarter but then they all got tired," Hanson said. "Some of them haven't logged as many minutes in the last few games so fatigue hit us and we got sloppy and started to turn it over, and they made a run back at us, and then we put some of our key older guys back in and held them for the last five minutes of the second without a field goal."
The minutes were evenly distributed across the T-Bird roster, with only four players seeing at least 20 minutes of court time.
Doug Plumb led the way with 18 points and eight rebounds, and
Kamar Burke added 15 points and seven boards.
The bench scored 24 points, led by
Mike Lewandowski, who netted nine to go with seven rebounds in 12 efficient minutes of action.
"The crew of seniors that will be graduating have logged a lot of minutes so it was certainly nice for the first time in a long time to be able to put
Nathan Yu on the bench for the full fourth quarter," Hanson said. "The young guys are going to have to shine and I really liked some of the things I saw. They need court time and they need time together, but what you saw the last six minutes of that game is the future of UBC basketball so I'm happy with what they showed."
Mack Roth was the only Heat player to score in double digits with 15 points on the night. Ed Dane Medi grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds.
The T-Birds were again extremely effective defending top Heat scorer Yassine Ghomari. He was held to seven points and hit just four of his 22 field goal attempts over the weekend series.
The one blemish for the T-Birds was, as it has often been this season, their turnover total. They gave the ball away 20 times on Saturday.
"It's who we are. We're turning the ball over, and there's nothing you can do about some of these turnovers. They are totally inexplainable," Hanson said. "We throw the ball straight out of bounds sometimes and I can't even get mad anymore because it's just happening. We try to address it but I've decided I'm not going to get any more grey hair over it because it's who we are, and we just have to get better stops. If we're going to be giving them 10 extra possessions a game we better be defensively 10 points better than them."
UBC Okanagan falls to 2-12 with the loss.
The T-Birds are up to 12-2 and still hold a one-game edge over Victoria for first in the Pacific Division. Next up for UBC is a pair of games in Abbotsford against UFV, and they finish the season with a home-and-home against Victoria that will determine who finishes on top in the division standings.
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