Last chance for Erin Beckett. Same goes for Jennifer Clyne and Maria Neumann.
All three players are in their final years of eligibility with the UNBC Northern Timberwolves women's basketball team. They'd like nothing better than to win the PACWEST Athletic Association provincial championship tournament in North Vancouver this weekend and advance to the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association nationals, March 15-17 in Lethbridge.
"It's all of a sudden feeling like the end, and I'm just so excited that we have one more chance to win," said Beckett, a six-foot post player from Prince George.
"We've had the group that can do it for a few years and always something has happened but this year I feel we have the maturity and the confidence. Now that we have girls that have lost in provincials, we know that feeling. We know that it's awful and we want to win. We want it this year."
The Timberwolves claimed their first and only provincial championship to date in 2007-08, one season before Beckett joined the club. She played her first year of eligibility at the University of Saskatchewan. Clyne and Neumann, meanwhile, were both rookies on that banner-winning squad.
The T-wolves, the top team during the 2011-12 regular season with a 15-1 record, will start provincials with a Friday semifinal (3 p.m.) against the winner of a quarterfinal today between the fourth-ranked Quest University Kermodes (9-7) and the fifth-seeded Camosun College Chargers (7-9). For that quarterfinal, Quest will be missing its best player, forward Katryn Sandbichler, who tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee during a Feb. 4 game in Prince George.
During the season, UNBC was pushed by both Quest and Camosun but came away with a combined 4-0 record. The Timberwolves beat the Kermodes 81-59 and 77-63 and downed Camosun 62-59 and 90-59.
"They are completely different," UNBC head coach Loralyn Murdoch said of the Chargers and Kermodes. "Camosun tries to play a slow-down game. They do a lot more full-court pressing and zone [defences] and Quest wants to push the ball a bit more."
In today's other quarterfinal, the No. 3 Capilano University Blues (13-3) will battle the No. 6 Kwantlen Eagles (6-10). The surviving team will tip off against the second-ranked Vancouver Island University Mariners (14-2) in Friday's other semifinal. The championship game will start at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
While the T-wolves are loaded with veteran players, they do have one rookie, Prince George's Danielle Steele. The five-foot-seven guard can't wait to experience playoffs for the first time.
"I'm very excited," she said. "We've been working really hard all season. We're going to give it our all and make it worthwhile.
"There is a lot on the line. The teams are going to be coming out a lot stronger than in regular games. Everyone's looking for that top spot because only one team gets to go to nationals."
As the Timberwolves head into playoffs, their hottest offensive player is second-year forward Sarah Robin. In the last two games of the regular season, against Langara and Kwantlen respectively, she scored 12 points (in 13 minutes of court time) and 27 points.
Naturally, Murdoch is happy that Robin is in peak form right now. At provincials though, she'll be one puzzle piece in an attack that will rely on all five players on the floor.
"I don't think we'll lean on her any more than we have all year," Murdoch said. "She has played very, very well in big games and played extremely well defensively against the top teams so she'll continue to have that role. I just want her to be comfortable, if she's given an opportunity offensively, that she doesn't shy away from it."
