VANCOUVER – The UBC Thunderbirds (6-4) return from their winter break to take on the Trinity Western Spartans (1-7) this weekend in the T-Birds' first home games in over a month. Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m. (PT) on Friday and 6:00 p.m. (PT) on Saturday at War Memorial Gym.
The blue and gold endured an unusually road-heavy first half of their season, with seven of the team's first 10 matchups taking place away from the friendly confines of War Memorial.
"I think we survived a pretty grueling initial schedule," reflected UBC head coach
Kevin Hanson. "You really can't put into words what a team goes through when you play on the road four weekends in a row, it really takes you out of your routine. But at the same time, it can be really good for team development. It wears you down, but it makes you tougher."
A T-Birds team with plenty of new faces started forming its identity through the adversity of the abundance of away games, emerging as a strong defensive unit built from the inside out. The 'Birds are allowing the lowest opponent field goal percentage in the conference while leading Canada West in rebounding.
Despite being happy with the team's overall defence, coach Hanson says he sees several areas where the 'Birds can improve in the season's second half.
"We want to play more up-tempo, push the ball more in transition," commented the six-time Canada West Coach of the Year. "I'm surprised at how low our three-point percentage is so far too, I think we're going to show that we're capable of scoring more points that way. We can also cut down on turnovers, a turnover works out to about a point and a half against you in a game, so we need to focus on eliminating some of those."
Visiting Trinity Western enters the weekend on a seven-game losing streak in Canada West play, though they are coming off of a win against Thompson Rivers during a winter break exhibition tilt. The Spartans have already lost almost as many games as they did all of last year, after finishing 12-8 and making a play-in game in 2022-23. The T-Birds and Spartans split their two matchups last season, both in Langley.
"(Trinity) has a couple of dynamic scorers, we had trouble with David Mutabazi last year," concluded Hanson. "They have three key guys back from last year's team who have played really well. We've got a lot of respect for them, they play a real freelance style of game and base a lot of decisions on analytics."
Find tickets for this weekend's action
here. Stream all regular season UBC basketball, live or on demand, on
Canada West TV.
