VANCOUVER – The No. 10 UBC Thunderbirds women's basketball team gave their fans a thrilling home opener Friday night at War Memorial Gym. After struggling for the first three-and-a-half quarters, the Thunderbirds pulled together an exciting comeback to beat the Thompson Rivers WolfPack by a final score of 75-71.
BOX SCORE
WBB: T-Birds v. TRU (Nov. 9, 2012) Gallery
Second-year point guard
Cassandra Knievel (Nanaimo, BC) had a career-high 20 points to lift her team to victory.
Kris Young (North Vancouver, BC) and
Leigh Stansfield (Victoria, BC) also had big nights, scoring 17 and 16 points respectively. Those three players combined to make 22 of 39 field goals, and the Thunderbirds finished at 50.8% as a team on the night.
WolfPack center Diane Schuetze (Vernon, BC) had a game high 22 points and 10 rebounds, her third straight double-double to start the season.
“Everybody knows we're a young team and it's going to take us a while to get our legs, and we have a lot of people stepping up in bigger roles. To be down like that after three and be struggling as much as we were, I think it showed good resilience from our girls to just keep at it and keep working,” said UBC head coach
Deb Huband. “Somebody stepped up. It might've been Cass hitting the threes, or Binns hitting her three, or Leigh finishing inside, or us getting a few steals, but accumulatively we were able to surge. It was nice that we still had that in us even though we were really struggling in a lot of aspects of the game earlier on.”
Jen Ju (Vancouver, BC) lead the way for the WolfPack in the first. The speedy point guard made the Thunderbirds pay for their poor transitions, catching them off guard on the fast break. She made a three point play with a minute to go, scoring nine of her team's 15 first quarter points. Young kept the Thunderbirds in the game by being active at both ends of the floor. She took a charge and hit three of her first five shots, including a three-ball, to score half of the Thunderbirds points and keep the WolfPack lead to just one.
Schuetze took over the game in the second quarter. After a quiet start of just one rebound and 0-4 from the field in the first, she hauled down five rebounds, three of them on the offensive glass, and exploded for 13 points in the second. A powerful 6-foot-3 center, the Thunderbirds simply could not keep her under control, and the WolfPack went off to a 37-30 halftime lead.
In the third, it was Taiysa Worsfeld (Kamloops, BC) and Tracy Kocs (Coquitlam, BC) who came alive for the WolfPack. They shot 53% as a team in the quarter, but only managed to build their lead by two more points thanks to great effort off the glass by UBC.
With four minutes to go in the final period, Knievel hit three consecutive three-balls in the span of a minute to spark a comeback, and the home crowd was roaring with excitement. Suddenly the Thunderbirds, who had been down by as much as 12 points, were leading by three.
“Kris drove in and they started doubling her, so my check was helping off and Kris found me, and I was in rhythm. I felt pretty good so I just kept shooting them, and we needed them, we were down by six. It was a pretty good shot for me and I had the green light so I just went for it,” said Knievel, who finished 6-11 from behind the arch.
Spurred by that momentum and playing with a renewed confidence, the Thunderbirds finally started to execute offensively. With 1:40 to go, WolfPack guard Jorri Duxbury (Salmon Arm, BC) hit a three pointer of her own to tie the game at 69 points apiece. But UBC responded as Young hit a turnaround jumper. Schuetze went back to the line, making both free throws, finishing 6-8 on the night. Stansfield then banked a clutch shot off the backboard to give the Thunderbirds a two point edge with 42 seconds left.
The WolfPack turned the ball over on the next play, and then with the shot clock dying for UBC,
Victoria Spangehl (White Rock, BC) received a long hard pass under the basket and drew the foul. She missed the first one but hit the second, putting UBC up by three with 12.1 left. The Wolfpack failed to convert on their next possession, and in desperation fouled Young with 2.5 seconds remaining. She hit the second free throw to seal the game for UBC.
Knievel was beaming with confidence after igniting her team with the best game of her career, but she quickly acknowledged that the Thunderbirds should not have put themselves in that situation. “We needed that fourth quarter. We didn't play very well in the beginning, but I'm obviously happy that I could step up and help us out to win that game at the end there,” she said.
While UBC is a very young team, the WolfPack rely heavily on their three fifth-year veterans. Ju, Schuetze, and Kocs combined for 47 their teams points to go along with 18 rebounds and six assists.
Huband says she and her coaching staff will watch tape and look to make some adjustments for tomorrow night's rematch in order to better control those three.
“I think we can do a much better job in every facet of the game. Defensively we gave up some scores that we'd like to take back. Offensively in the first half in particular we turned the ball over way too much, so we can execute a lot better than we did. Just continuing to learn as we go, whether it by playing a game and going through that experience or having a chance to go through video, I think we'll be a lot better tomorrow night,” said Huband.
Knievel thinks the solution is simple. “We've gotta come out stronger. We were really stagnant, not really moving the ball or working as a team on offense. We've gotta pick up our defense and then move the ball and play like a team,” she said.
Tonight's win moves UBC to 3-0 to start off the regular season, while Thompson Rivers slips to 2-1. Saturday night's rematch will tip-off at 5 p.m. at War Memorial Gym.
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