Nothing like home cooking to top up the energy needed to play basketball and UNBC Timberwolves small forward Rebecca Landry always looks forward to the dessert served up the fans who make their presence known at the Northern Sport Centre.
The UNBC faithful are not afraid to exercise their lungs, beat on drums or stomp their feet on the floor to make noise and create a charged atmosphere that never fails to fire up the local favourites wearing green and gold. The T-wolves feed off that fan fervour and Landry has certainly missed it.
After seeing an entire U SPORTS Canada West season cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, both UNBC basketball teams return to friendly confines of their home gym at the NSC Friday and Saturday when they host the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack in a pair of doubleheaders.
“It has been a long time, I think it’s almost been two years since we’ve gotten to play at home and everyone is just super-excited to be able to play in front of our home crowd because everyone in P.G. is so good at coming out and supporting us,” said Landry. “We’re just excited to compete with that great energy that the town always brings.”
Landry, a third-year biochemistry/molecular biology major, is now into her second year of athletics eligibility and this season she won’t have her big sister Madison to lean on. The elder Landry, UNBC’s all-time assists leader and third-most prolific career scorer, is now playing pro basketball in Luxembourg after four seasons at UNBC.
“I miss being her teammate and team-wise she was just such a force on the team and got lots of points for us and was a really good leader,” said Rebecca. “Now, without her, we’re having to adjust and everyone’s coming into their own, taking on new roles. It’s definitely been a challenge but everyone’s working hard.”
Landry, as well as fourth-year All-Canadian forward Alina Shakirova, third-year point guard Lucy Guan and second-year guard Anastasia Soltes, are the only returning T-wolves from the 2019-20 season. Shakirova opened the season last Friday with a 33-point game in what ended up an 80-71 win over TRU in Kamloops, then followed that up with a 22-point night Saturday in a 73-48 loss to the Fraser Valley Cascades in Abbotsford. The 25-year-old native of Moscow, Russia has a conference-leading 27.5 points-per-game average.
“She is playing hard on defence and doesn’t give up on offence, she’s trying to find new options to score and she just encourages young players to fight and play our game,” said UNBC head coach Sergey Shchepotkin, now in his 10th season.
The other Russian on the T-wolves court, 25-year-old post Svetlana Boykova, finally made her Canada West debut Friday and responded with 22 rebounds and 10 points in the win over TRU and followed that with 11 rebounds on Saturday. Boykova, who captained her Russian team at Universiade in 2019, arrived in Prince George that summer but suffered a preseason knee injury which ended her first season of eligibility before it even began. Then came COVID and another lost season and now she’s finally free to start making her presence felt.
“I’m really hoping for them (Shakirova and Boykova) because they can be that core of the team and right now they are showing their leadership and I hope it will help us to build this team,” said Shchepotkin. The big names - Vasiliki (Louka) Maria (Mongomo) and Madison (Landry) – have all left and we need to change the picture and new people will come up and show that. Vasiliki wasn’t as good in her first two years and needed a lot of work to grow her into the famous Vasiliki, and probably the same will happen for this new generation. I see big potential.”
Like Boykova, fellow first-year forward Laura Garmendia Garcia, a native of Castelldefels, Spain, arrived in the UNBC camp in the summer of 2019 but was sidelined the entire season with a torn ACL, and that was followed by another lost season due to the pandemic. Shchepotkin says Garcia showed some moments of brilliance in the preseason, including a 24-point game against the Calgary Dinos, but there have been a few valleys as well in her performance and like the rest of the team she will have to work at developing consistency.
On a roster of 12, the T-wolves have eight Canada West rookies, including speedy guard Sarah Kuklisin, a Calgary high school grad who played more than half of the Fraser Valley game and forced three steals five turnovers in that 22 minutes of court time. The other first-year T-wolves are Kelly Road Secondary School graduate G Jenna Korolek, G Adiah Tapas-Singh, F Maggie Mowser, G Taylor Blais, and G/F Hanna Busic.
Cevanna Carlson, a six-foot post, chose to not get vaccinated for COVID due to medical issues and is not eligible to play in her third season at UNBC. Bella Mesquita, a five-foot-11 forward decided to take the year off for medical reasons. Without them, the T-wolves will be one of the shortest teams in the league.
“Teams are big, especially in the B.C. group, and all the teams are good,” said Shchepotkin, who has two new assistant coaches in Dave Fuller and Amanda Kynoch. “So it’s probably going to be a difficult season for us but we are looking forward to getting that experience to show what we’ve learned and try to improve.”
The T-wolves and WolfPack women tip off Friday at 6 p.m.
