KELOWNA – It wasn't their most convincing win, but in the end the Thunderbirds prevailed 62-55 on Saturday night to complete their weekend sweep of the UBC Okanagan Heat.
BOX SCORE
For the second night in a row,
Leigh Stansfield (Victoria, BC) led all players with a game-high 18 points to go along with seven rebounds. Heat guard Emily Kanester (Vernon, BC) had 17 points and six boards in a losing effort for the home side.
“I'm feeling pretty pumped, and my teammates are feeling really confident in me,” said Stansfield.
“I know Maggie (Sundberg) is giving me a lot of really nice assists. I'm getting a lot of looks off of my teammates creating for me. So whenever that happens it's really nice and I'm feeling really good, but maybe a little shaky after tonight. Tonight was a bit of a rocky game,” she confessed.
Neither team shot the ball very well tonight, with both sides finishing the game under 40 percent from the floor. The Thunderbirds let the Heat hang around all game until eventually pulling away ever so slightly in the fourth quarter.
“They're a super scrappy team. They were outworking us for a lot of possessions and they were getting the loose balls. Credit to them, they were in it because they were working hard,” Stansfield said of the Heat.
It was Stansfield who hit a buzzer beater off an inbounds pass underneath the basket to make it 18-7 Thunderbirds after the first. But a deep three from Kanester followed by a Roslyn Huber (Kelowna, BC) jumper pulled the Heat back within 5 half way through the second. Huber was on fire in the second quarter, helping her team outwork and outscore the Thunderbirds 17-9 to make it 27-24 at the half. At that point, UBCO already had 13 turnovers compared to 6 for UBC.
Jaime Hills (North Vancouver, BC) continued shooting the ball well, making both her attempts from beyond the arc. She finished the weekend 7-7 from three-point range. However, she was one of several Thunderbirds in foul trouble, and the Heat were in a penalty situation for more than half of the third quarter, allowing them to keep the game in reach. A three-ball drilled by Sarah Allison (South Surrey, BC) made it a two point game with two to go in the third, and then Jessica Jazdarehee (Coquitlam, BC) tied it with two free throws.
Thankfully, the buzzer-beating heroics of
Cassandra Knievel (Nanaimo, BC) changed the momentum of the game in the Thunderbirds favour at the end of the third. She drilled another one for the first bucket of the fourth quarter and finished the game with nine points and three assists.
Several steals in a row by the Heat led to an easy layup and a timeout by the Thunderbirds with 7:41 to go. But then with the game in crunch time,
Kris Young (North Vancouver, BC) got going. In foul trouble for much of the night, she played limited minutes until the final frame. She had seven of her 13 points in the fourth quarter to spark her team to the victory.
It also looked like the switch to a zone defence in the final ten or so minutes paid off for the Thunderbirds.
With six games remaining in the regular season, the Thunderbirds head home with a 12-4 record and will await a visit from the Mount Royal Cougars next weekend. With the playoffs approaching, the Thunderbirds can't afford to let up. Stansfield stressed the need for her team to rebound better and block out their opponents. “I think that's maybe where we struggled over the weekend. And we need to work on D-ing up without fouls. We're crowding the dribbler a lot. We can play clean D but we didn't focus on it enough this weekend,” she said.
Tip-off for next weekend's games at War Memorial Gym is slated for 6 p.m. on Friday night and 5 p.m. on Saturday night.
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