After watching their 11-point lead whither into a six-point deficit, the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack needed some on-court wizardry in the final three minutes to avoid a two-game CIS Canada West women's basketball sweep by the UNBC Timberwolves.
And when the WolfPack needed her most, Jorri Duxbury was the magical maestro.
The fourth-year guard from Salmon Arm had been a thorn in the UNBC side all game, punishing the T-wolves with accurate shooting, tenacious defence, and her finely-tuned passing radar. No reason for her stop doing all those things with the game on the line.
It started at the free-throw line where Duxbury nailed both shots to cut the lead to four, a feat replicated in short order by TRU forward Kassie Colonna. T-wolves guard Mercedes Van Koughnett tried to reverse the trend with some aggressive offensive rebounding that put the ball in her hands, but she missed her baseline shot with 1:35 left, and then it was up to Duxbury.
The 21-year-old veteran ended a long WolfPack possession with a 30-foot midcourt shot that sailed through the net for a one-point lead with 41.3 seconds left and they hung on to beat UNBC 76-72.
"We really wanted to grit that one out, we know it's tough to win on the road and it took a lot to bounce back from Friday night," said Duxbury, who shot a game-high 26 points, sinking half of her 20 field goal attempts. "They beat us in preseason, and especially since we've been trading games so much it's getting more and more intense each game."
UNBC won 73-53 on Friday and WolfPack head coach Scott Reeves was breathing a sigh of relief his team's shooting was considerably better in the rematch.
"We struggled to shoot the ball this weekend, and ending at 37 per cent is better than 24 per cent we shot [Friday] and we were 80 per cent from the foul line and I was proud of how we responded after UNBC took it to us in the first game," said Reeves.
UNBC was in catchup mode for most of the first half until just before the buzzer, when Van Koughnett snagged a pair of steals and sunk a timely trey buzzer to tie it 33-33. She continued to fuel the offence in the second half, feeding teammates Emily Kaehn and Jen Bruce with regularity. All three finished with 16 points, backed admirably by a 14-point effort from Sarah Robin.
Van Koughnett was nearly flawless from the free-throw line, hitting 8-of-9 and picked up 12 rebounds, 10 which came in the vicinity of the UNBC hoop. But the T-wolves blew their chance to force overtime with 30 seconds left when Kaehn's outlet pass was picked off by Tayisa Wolsford.
"We were up by six with about a minute left by we let them walk right to the hoop, we just lost that fight and that drive to win, we maybe got as little too comfortable being up," said Van Koughnett.
"They played a lot more physical tonight and we missed a lot of easy buckets and were little more uncontrolled on offence. We're not going to win by skill, we're going to win by being the hardest-working team every single night."
The loss dropped the T-wolves' record to 1-3, while TRU in now 2-2.
"We couldn't stop the three-pointers and second shots and we weren't as good as we were [Friday] on defence, and for our team it's really important to play defence 100 per cent," said UNBC head coach Sergey Shchepotkin. "Unfortunately we couldn't score in critical moments."
