VANCOUVER – For the second straight year, the UBC Thunderbirds found themselves down by 11 at halftime in the playoffs against the Alberta Pandas. And for the second straight year, they proceeded to engineer a fantastic second half comeback to gut out a massive home win.
Olivia Weekes earned her ninth double-double of the season in another great individual performance, with 21 points, 11 rebounds and six steals.
Jaeli Ibbetson recorded a highly efficient 15 points and six boards off the bench, while
Sara Toneguzzi tallied 11 points, three rebounds and five assists along with some tenacious defence.
"I thought in the second quarter especially we got a little flustered and we weren't playing our game," said UBC head coach
Dave Taylor. "And then we got Jaeli going, we had some big shifts from other people, and we just started playing our game. We were hoping we would wear them down a little bit and we did."
That second quarter saw the T-Birds get held to just 13 points, a far cry from the opening few minutes when the home team shot out to a 14-5 lead. But the Pandas quickly found their footing, and attacked the paint and the offensive glass with relentless force.
Mishynn Miller led the way in that regard, putting up 19 points and 11 rebounds (seven of them on the offensive glass) in the end before she fouled out late. Jayden Tanner recorded 17 points, four rebounds and four steals.
In all, from midway through the first quarter until halftime the Pandas outscored the Thunderbirds 36-16, turning an early deficit into an 11-point halftime lead. They grabbed nine offensive rebounds in the opening 20 minutes, and shot 14-18 from the free throw line.
The high-water mark for the visitors came about halfway into the third, when a short-range jumper from Elise Toogood followed soon after by a made free throw stretched their lead to 13 points.
The turning point came when Toneguzzi forced Alberta turnovers in their own backcourt on consecutive possessions, helping lead to an Ibbetson and-one finish and a layup for Weekes. After Tanner banked in a three-pointer on her team's final shot of the quarter, Ibbetson responded with a buzzer-beater from the corner to put the score at 55-50 heading into the fourth.
Both teams refused to give an inch to the other as the game neared its conclusion. After Morgan Harris and Rylee Semeniuk helped force three straight turnovers which pushed Alberta's lead back to eight, the Thunderbirds then held the Pandas scoreless for the next four minutes as they made a big run of their own.
After Toneguzzi rebounded a miss off her own jumper and snuck through the defence to lay it in, the score stood tied at 66-66 with just over a minute to play. From there, the Thunderbirds clamped down defensively, and took advantage of the Pandas giving away a couple cheap fouls that put UBC at the free throw line.
Weekes came up with a final steal at a critical time, grabbing the ball off an Alberta inbounds pass while up by two with just 25 seconds left, and then passing it to
Katie Hartman who calmly sunk two free throws to put her team up multiple possessions.
After closing out the game with a 75-69 win, the Thunderbirds will now face off against the Regina Cougars in the Canada West Semifinals. It's a very familiar-feeling matchup for Taylor, the former Regina head coach.
"It just doesn't get any easier, but we earned the right to be at home which is awesome," he said on the prospect of facing a nationally-ranked team for the second straight postseason outing. "Obviously I've got a lot of respect for Regina…they run a lot of different stuff than what I did so it'll be a challenge, but again it's more about us and making sure we play well."
That semifinal battle will commence at 6:00 p.m. (PT) on Friday, February 20, inside War Memorial Gym.
