Fun in the sun, some California beach time, four games against American college basketball teams and seats at an NBA game -- not a bad way for the UNBC Timberwolves men's team to end the year.
The T-wolves kicked off their post-Christmas tour with a pair of wins at the Bill Reynolds Holiday Classic in Costa Mesa, Calif., and finished up the trip losing two exhibition games against tougher NAIA opponents.
The T-wolves lost 80-59 on Monday to the Vanguard University Lions of the Golden State Athletic Conference, who improved to 13-2 this season with the victory. That came one day after UNBC dropped a 65-50 decision to the Hope International Royals on their home court in Fullerton.
In the first game of the tour last Friday, UNBC stopped the Pacific Union Pioneers 82-66 and followed that Saturday with an 83-73 triumph over the Bethesda University of California Flames.
For T-wolves head coach Todd Jordan, whose 3-7 team ranks seventh in the Canada West Conference standings, the Christmas tour was a chance to work out a few new strategic wrinkles the T-wolves will bring to the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre next Thursday night when the CIS schedule resumes against the University of Calgary Dinos.
"It was good that we won the first two games and kind of got some of the rust out," said Jordan. "The second two nights we played two very good teams who would be top-end CIS teams near the top of the country if they were up here. We battled both those teams really tough for a half and we ran out of gas when it started getting to the third or fourth nights playing back to back," he said.
Dan Stark and Jeff Chu were standouts in the weekend games for UNBC, as was forward Devin McMurty, who filled in admirably for UNBC starter Franck Olivier Kouagnia, who was unable to make the trip.
"We're just excited to get back to the second part of our season. We could be 5-5, we've had a couple of games that have gotten away on is but we can't worry too much about our record," Jordan said.
Away from the court, the UNBC players took in a Los Angeles Clippers game and took advantage of the warm weather to dip their feet into the Pacific Ocean.
"It was a good mix of getting some really good on-the-court stuff that will spark us going into the second half here and doing some of the off-court stuff as well," said Jordan.
The UNBC Timberwolves women's team also traveled to the Los Angeles area for a four-game tour that wrapped up Monday. The T-wolves ended with a 20-point win over the host Victor Valley Colleges Lady Rams to finish third at the five-team Victor Valley Tournament in Victorville, Calf.
"California was perfect, too warm there, it's a problem to come back," laughed T-wolves head coach Sergei Shchepotkin.
The T-wolves lost Friday in overtime to the Los Angeles Trade Tech Beavers to start the tournament but won their next three games. The scores and outcomes were of no concern to Shchepotkin, who used the four games to experiment with his team, giving red-shirted players Chantel Nicholson, Kayla Warton and Helen Wilson a chance to strut their talents playing with the T-wolves' starters. It was the T-wolves' first game since Nov. 30.
"They're in pretty good shape and I could see because they haven't had much game experience [during the semester break] some small mistakes like missed balls under the basket, but they played pretty good defence and the offence was OK," said Shchepotkin.
"We tried different systems on offence and defence so it was more like practice games. I especially wanted the girls who are freshmen to get more time on the court and get some experience so they can play in our league. It was very helpful for our preparation to be around a basketball environment and good team-building."
