The University of British Columbia Athletics

VANCOUVER – The duo of Kris Young and Harleen Sidhu did just enough for the UBC Thunderbirds women's basketball team to fend off a three-point shooting barrage from the Winnipeg Wesmen and claim an 81-75 victory in Vancouver on Friday night.

BOX SCORE
 


Young recorded 27 points and nine steals, one off the school record, while Sidhu had 24 points for UBC.
 
"They both had strong games," said UBC head coach Deb Huband. "Harleen was 12-of-13 from the foul line so that helped. Kris was hot from the three and generated a lot of offence. We'd like to be a little more balanced than that but we did have a balance between our inside outside game."
 
"Cass and few others had some threes at key times because we were able to move the ball and they started keying a lot on Harleen and went into that box-and-one for a little bit. Some other players were able to knock down some shots at key times, which is really important too."

Stephanie Kleysen scored 22 points for Winnipeg while Alyssa Grant chipped in with 19 and Megan Noonan added 16.
 
The Wesmen hit 13 triples on 18 opportunities while UBC made good on 10 of its 28 shots from beyond the arc.
 
The Thunderbirds' biggest three-pointer may have come from Cassandra Knievel with two minutes and 24 seconds left in the fourth quarter to put her team up 78-73. It came right after Noonan hit a layup with 2:47 to go to cut UBC's lead to 75-73.
 
Kleysen brought Winnipeg back to within three with a jumper at 2:06. Over the next two minutes, both teams had opportunities to score but failed. Kleysen blocked a Young shot with 19 seconds left in the game to give Winnipeg the ball back only to have Adrienne Parkin steal it with six seconds to go to finally seal the victory.
 
Both teams battled back and forth for the entire night, with UBC threatening to pull away numerous times only to see Winnipeg respond.
 
A Knievel triple just over three minutes into the fourth quarter gave UBC a 70-61 advantage but the visitors scored the next five points on a Kerri Kuzbyt layup and a Noonan three.
 
Young hit a three near the end of the third quarter to push UBC's lead to 64-55 but Kleysen hit two foul shots to round out the scoring in the period and then Noonan nailed another shot from beyond the arc to make it 64-60 at the beginning of the fourth.
 
The game opened with an 8-2 Winnipeg spurt only for UBC to score the next 16 points thanks to buckets from all five starters. In fact, all 81 UBC points came from the starting five. All but four of the Wesmen points came from their starters.
 
UBC built its lead to 21-11 on a Young three-pointer but an 18-5 run bridging the first and second quarter, capped off by a Grant layup, allowed Winnipeg to take a three-point lead, 29-26.
 
Sidhu tallied UBC's last six points of the first half, including four on free throws, to give the Thunderbirds a slim 39-38 halftime advantage.

For the game, Sidhu went 12-for-13 from the foul line, while the UBC team made good on 21 of its 25 chances. The Thunderbirds also had 19 steals in the game.

"I was happy that every time they pushed, we pushed back," said Huband.
 
Winnipeg (4-3) will travel to Victoria for a matchup against the Vikes at 5 p.m. UBC (5-2) will host Manitoba at War Memorial Gymnasium at 5 p.m.
 
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