It would have been a long flight home to Vancouver for the UBC Thunderbirds had they not found something extra to finish off the UNBC Timberwolves in the late stages Saturday night at the Northern Sport Centre.
T-birds captain Kate Johnson found that finishing flurry, starting with a go-ahead swish that gave her team a one-point lead with 1:36 left on the clock. The fourth-year guard followed up right away with a three that essentially put it out of reach for the T-wolves, who fell 68-66 to avenge their four-point loss to UNBC on Friday.
Trailing 38-34 at the half, UBC went on a 19-4 run and outscored the T-wolves 21-12 in the third quarter. UNBC finished the quarter with eight unanswered points and the battle was on as the continued to chip away at the T-birds’ 55-50 lead.
“Last night in the first half a lot of points were scored and the big thing was us was to try to tighten up our defence and for sure the third quarter was by far our best defensive quarter until we gave up five points in the last 30 seconds or so,” said UBC head coach Erin McAleenan. “With a young, inexperienced team and also coming off a year-and-a-half of playing no games, we’re also learning how to play with a lead.
It doesn’t hurt having Johnson, their court general, finding ways to pull a win out of the fire.
“She’s super-quick and she’s able to attack to draw fouls or get to the rim,” said McAleenan. “But you can see what’s really improved in her game is her ability to shoot the three and she hit a pretty big three at the end there and that helped us a lot.”
Alina Shakirova also hit from long range to put UNBC up by five with less than six minutes to play and the T-wolves had a shot at extending their lead late in the game, but a couple of possession calls went against them and they missed some key shots down the stretch when pressured by the visitors.
Johnson shot a game-high 18 points and second-year Emily Martindale put up 17 points and eight rebounds to lead the UBC cause. For UNBC, Shakirova collected 17 points and Rebecca Landry totaled 12 points and had eight rebounds, while Sveta Boykova had her usual day at the office with 15 rebounds.
The win improved the T-birds’ fifth-place Canada West women’s basketball record to 3-5, while UNBC (4-2) remained third.
“It’s super-hard to win against UBC, they’re a really big school and yesterday when we finished everyone was so happy we won,” said UNBC freshman forward Laura Garmendia-Garcia. “Today we put up a good fight, we just had a bad third quarter where they started scoring and we couldn’t find a way to score and that was what killed us.
“This weekend we proved we are fighters. We’re not the tallest or the fastest team in the league but we can put up a fight, no matter what team we play.”
The T-wolves host UVic next weekend in their final games before the Christmas break.
