What a difference a day made for the UNBC Timberwolves.
One night after they just about knocked off the top men’s basketball team in the Canada West Conference the T-wolves came out with an absolute stinker Saturday night at the Northern Sport Centre, losing 110-56 to the Alberta Golden Bears.
“We just didn’t show up as a team, and against a talented squad it’s pretty tough to accomplish anything if we’re not mentally here,” said T-wolves assistant coach Dale Dergousoff.
“If there isn’t that fire to compete and go out and just lay it out there on the court you’re going to struggle and talented team will just beat you up. This is probably the toughest loss in the 13 years I’ve been with this program. But it’s a loss and all we can do is get better and make sure we don’t repeat it.”
Golden Bears forward Mamadou Gueye played just 21 minutes but picked up a game-high 23 points and led all players with nine rebounds. Dwan Williams contributed 16 points while Austin Waddoups had 11 points and seven assists.
The Bears came out firing with great accuracy from long range, hitting six of their eight three-point shots to go up 28-19 after 10 minutes and stretched the lead to 19 at halftime. Alberta proved unstoppable in the third-quarter, going on a 26-point run which clearly set the teams apart. They outscored UBC 36-7 in third quarter and never looked back, posting their most lopsided win of the U Sports season.
“We’ve been waiting a few games for our team to break out like that, we knew we had a bunch of depth and talent so it was nice to see a bunch of different people step up on the same night,” said Alberta head coach Barnaby Craddock. "Last night we were in a dogfight and UNBC played fantastic and tonight I thought we managed to step our game up to a different level. I thought we were better defensively and had a bit more energy and focus.”
The Golden Bears beat the T-wolves 78-69 on Friday, a game in which UNBC was down by just two points with three minutes left. Whatever momentum they might have gained in that moral victory, was lost on the T-wolves in the rematch. They did have a brief lead midway through the first quarter Saturday but that didn’t last long.
For the T-wolves, Austin Chandler finished with 11 points and Marcus MacKay had 10. UNBC shot just 31.8 per cent from the field as compared with the Bears, who hit 65 per cent.
“We didn’t come out with any effort at all today and that’s really sad to see for our program and this university,” said MacKay, a fourth-year shooting guard.
“We played with full effort in the first three games of the season, we really battled but this game we didn’t okay hard at all. We just have to do our best to put this behind us and go back to practice and get ready for Trinity Western.”
The weekend sweep leaves Alberta (4-0) ate top of the heap in Canada West. UNBC (0-4) will try to get into the win column this weekend when they play host to Trinity Western Spartans in a two-game set Friday and Saturday at the NSC.
