After a rough opening quarter plagued by turnovers and missed-shot opportunities, the UNBC Timberwolves had a chance to atone for their mistakes and even had realistic shot at beating the Fraser Valley Cascades.
Tyrell Laing gave them that hope, like he’s done so often in his brilliant five-year Canada West basketball career, when he helped erase a 13-point deficit with a pair of long bombs sandwiched around a David Tiessen three, followed by a timely jumper from T-wolves big man Spencer Ledoux, which cut the lead to two.
The pro-UNBC crowd gathered Friday in the Northern Sport Centre went wild when Laing put the T-wolves ahead by a point late in the second quarter and by the end of the half the Cascades felt little comfort nursing a 42-39 lead.
The T-wolves matched their opponents step-for-step for most of the third quarter until, with 4:41 left, Ledoux committed his fourth foul and had to come out of the game. With no Ledoux to worry about, the Cascades and their tall trees had a little more freedom under the hoop and used it build back their advantage.
Kyle Claggett, Dario Lopez and Dylan Kinsley were the difference-makers for Fraser Valley, hitting their shots with enough regularity down the stretch to frustrate their opponents, and even with Ledoux’s positive influence for the duration of the fourth quarter it wasn’t enough for UNBC.
The T-wolves lost 87-83 to drop to 4-9 on the season, while the Cascades, 88-76 winners on Friday, swept the weekend series to improve to 7-4.
“Today we had a lot of ups and downs and I thought we fought for some good stretches but we also relapsed, which allowed them to get a little bit of a stretch in the lead,” said Shittu. “A lot of those things are just mental lapses and a lot of it is out of your control sometimes, the ball seems to have a bit of grease on it and there’s noting you can do but play hard in other areas.”
Shittu, the T-wolves’ Mr. Excitement, led the game off with a trey and also put down a thundering dunk that contributed to his 17-point night. He also used those springs in his feet to get up and block three shots. Ledoux also reached the 17-point mark and Payton Tirrell contributed 16 points and had nine assists.
Claggett was rock-steady with the ball in his hands and the fourth-year forward from Mission missed just one of his seven field -goal attempts and collected 15 points. Lopez finished with a team-high 16 points, Kinley hit four of his 10 three attempts for a 14-point game and three Cascades - Vick Toor, Zubair Seyed and Jordyn Sekhon had 10-point efforts.
Laing, who shot a season-high 29 points on Friday, led all shooters with 19 points in the rematch. After the reminder the defending Canada West scoring champion offered Friday, Cascades head coach Joe Enevoldson said his team made some slight adjustments and was better-prepared to deal with Laing.
“He’s a heckuva player and hit some really tough shots (Friday) night and we just talked about our ball screen and we wanted to make sure we got a hand up earlier,” said Enevoldson. “We didn’t do much different from last night but we were a little bit more aware of their mid-ball screen.
“Spencer (Ledoux) does a great job for them and we wanted to attack him early to try to get him out of the game and I thought we did a good job of that.”
The T-wolves were missing gritty six-foot-three guard Chris Ross (ankle injury) and six-foot-nine forward Rotash Mattu (sick). Both usually draw significant court time and without them the struggled to contain the Cascades’ bigger guys.
“We defended better but we still had too many mistakes and dug ourselves a hole,” said UNBC head coach Todd Jordan. “Credit to them, their defence put us into some clogged areas at times but there were other times when we let ourselves dribble into crowds that put in some trouble situations. They’re a pretty big team and without Rotash, we are pretty small when (Ledoux) has to come off the floor and that definitely had an effect.”
The Cascades won the turnover battle 22-18 but it seemed whenever the T-wolves got a case of the butter fingers it came back to bite them. Fraser Valley converted 31 points off turnovers while went the other way for 21 points.
“There’s lots we can learn from this game, our turnovers were our biggest enemies today and we kept shooting ourselves in the foot” said T-wolves guard Vova Pluzhnikov. “We just need to stay together and execute our offensive plan and defensively we just have to play better one-on-one defence and tighten things up and be ready to guard next weekend because we’re going to face offensive powerhouse.”
The T-wolves will be on the road next weekend when they visit the high-octane Trinity Western Spartans in Langley Friday and Saturday. The UNBC have just two home games left. They’ll play Victoria at the NSC on a date yet to be determined after the Jan. 14 game was postponed by the pandemic. UNBC will wrap up the season Feb. 19 on seniors night against Trinity Western.
