After five years playing basketball with the UNBC Timberwolves, Preety Nijjar and Stacey Graham won’t play another home game but they’re not quite ready to call it a career.
The two graduating seniors have a U Sports Canada West playoff series to play this weekend.
The University of Alberta Pandas made that possible Sunday afternoon in Edmonton when they completed a two-game sweep over the Lethbridge Pronghorns, defeating the visitors 67-47, after a 61-48 triumph on Saturday.
The T-wolves lost 87-53 to the Saskatchewan Huskies Saturday in their final game of the regular season at the Charles Jago Northern Sport but had to wait until Sunday to find out if the Pronghorns (5-15) could somehow pull out an upset, a tall order against the Pandas (17-3), who finished third in Canada West.
UNBC will travel to Vancouver to begin a best-of-three playoff series against the UBC Thunderbirds (16-4), who finished fourth in the standings but drop down one spot to fifth based on their season ranking. The top four teams (Winnipeg, Regina, Alberta and Saskatchewan) received first-round byes. The Huskies-T-birds series will continue Saturday. If a third game is required it would be played Sunday in Vancouver.
In Saturday’s regular-season finale, the defending national champion Huskies looked like the defending national champions they are in a dominant first half. They were razor-sharp with their three-point shooting and built a 44-17 lead. That afforded Saskatchewan the luxury of going to their bench in the second half and the T-wolves nudged closer on the scoreboard, but the Huskies still maintained 48-36 margin over the final 20 minutes.
“We played a tight game (Friday) with them and today they couldn’t miss their three-points (shots) – in the third quarter they shot 83 per cent, unbelievable,” said T-wolves head coach Sergey Shchepotkin. “It wasn’t our best game but I appreciate the job the girls did.
The T-wolves finished 12th and became the first UBC women’s team to qualify for the U Sports/CIS playoffs since they joined the Canada West Conference in 2012.
“It’s exciting,” said Shchepotkin. “I don’t like that we (had) to wait and see how Lethbridge (did), we should have won some more games. But on the other hand, the way our team progressed, we played some of the best teams in the country in tight games and it’s a matter of believing in ourselves.”
The Huskies spread the ball around well and had four players reach double figures. Megan Lindquist had 17 points, Libby Epoch and Megan Ahlstrom had 13, and Sabine Dukate had 10. Graham led the T-wolves with 14 points and had four rebounds and three steals, while Vasiliki Louka had 11 points and nine rebounds.
Graham is the product of basketball parents - Stu and Janet - who both played for Simon Fraser University. The 23-year-old guard from White Rock joined the T-wolves after graduating from Elgin Park secondary school.
“It feels good, I wanted to play my best tonight and give it my all because it was my last home game, but then I also know I’ve got some games next weekend,” said Graham, who spent her first two years of eligibility at Capilano College before she came to UNBC.
“My sister (Carly) played at Regina University and I always looked up to her and I wanted to be more than a college player, I wanted to be a CIS basketball player and I looked around for schools and Sergey was the one who responded to me.”
Nijjar, a six-foot-two forward, had four points and one rebound in 25 minutes on the floor before Shchepotkin took her and Graham out of the game with 3:02 left.
An aspiring doctor, Nijjar has applied for the Northern Medical Program at UNBC. The 22-year-old from Vancouver was UNBC’s first recruit by then coach Loralyn Murdoch when the T-wolves began playing in the CIS (now U Sports) in 2012. Before she came to UNBC, Nijjar won the high school double-A provincial title in 2011 and was the triple-A finalist with York House in 2012.
She’s looking forward to her first shot at the U Sports playoffs.
“This whole season has been (the highlight of her career) but playoffs would be amazing,” said Niijar. “There’s definitely been unacceptable losses – we lost by a few points to UBC when we were leading most of the game and (the Alberta series) we played great. Hopefully … we’ll continue and make it to the next round.”
