VANCOUVER – Sunday afternoon at UBC, the Thunderbirds put their 3-0 record on the line when they wrap up their 2022 home regular season schedule against the University of Alberta Pandas.
Dean Murten's club is coming off a historic 74-25 victory last Sunday against Lethbridge, but complacency is not in the cards for the blue and gold who enter Sunday's match with no shortage of motivation.
Going as far back as 1999-2000, the UBC women's rugby program had never scored as many as 74 points in a single game. A point of pride? Absolutely. But in the same breath the T-Birds are still surrendering too many points against according to their veteran head coach.
"I'm very happy with the amount of points we scored. We knew we had the ability to do that and scoring 74 points against any team is not easy," explained
Dean Murten. "But I'm not happy with the defense. That's one area of the game that if we're not strong enough in, then we won't win a national championship. We set our standards really high in all areas of the game, and if you get the defense right then everything else will fall into place. Defense for us is all about attitude and mindset and that's what we're trying to get better at. Going into this week we've got to be focused on getting better in that area."
Heading into Sunday's showdown with Alberta, UBC has managed a Canada West-best 160 points-for while holding their opponents to a combined 49 points against. During Sunday's triumph over Lethbridge, eight different players scored tries, including rookies
Kendra Roberts and
Sarah Fong. Veterans
Savannah Bauder,
Olivia Sarabura and
Shoshanah Seumanutafa each registered a pair of tries as well.
At the other side of the field, the Pandas started the week at 1-2 and at the bottom of the Canada West standings. They dropped two straight matches since after an opening day 22-20 victory against Lethbridge back on September 10
th.
Dean Murten added, "Alberta has been a strong program for many years. It's important for us to focus on ourselves and to not get complacent. We can beat ourselves when we start to look at standings and score lines. If we can get it right on the day then we'll give ourselves a strong chance to win. But for our final home game of the regular season I'd like to see another fast performance, a good solid defensive effort and lots of points on the board."
Sunday's clash against Alberta takes place at 1:00 p.m. at the Gerald McGavin UBC Rugby Centre.
