The Fraser Valley Cascades would have been justified to have a bottle of champagne on ice waiting for them in their locker room at the Northern Sport Centre.
Playing their last U SPORTS Canada West women’s basketball game of the regular season, they came in looking to celebrate one more win against the UNBC Timberwolves to finish with the best record in the entire conference and lock up home court advantage for the final four playoffs.
Winners of 15 of their 17 previous games, the big and aggressive Cascades were an intimidating bunch, as the T-wolves were reminded Wednesday in a 73-60 loss. But it was a much different story in the rematch Thursday.
UNBC made sure the Fraser Valley roadmap to first place overall was littered with obstacles. Forced to traverse Boykova Boulevard, the vanBruinessen Bypass and Landry Lane, the Cascades’ and their party plans were ditched in a 68-63 loss to the T-wolves.
Tough defence applied under the hoop by the aforementioned Sveta Boykova, Emma vanBruinessen and Rebecca Landry and the T-wolves’ refusal to bend to the physical demands of playing one of the strongest teams in Canada led UNBC to its biggest win of the season so far.
“This one was so important to us because we’re so close to the playoffs and every win will decide which spot we will stay,” said Boykova. “They were pretty high on the list and we tried our best.”
The T-wolves improved their fourth-place West Division record to 8-9. Fraser Valley (15-3) will still finish first in the West, but Saskatchewan (14-2) will host the Final Four because its .875 winning percentage is better than the Cascades’ .833.
“We just decided that to be our best we needed to play as a team and on our home court we have the great crowd so we just needed to play as hard as we can,” said UNBC guard Alina Shakirova. “They’re a really tall and physical team so we needed to give them a battle where they are used to getting their points, so we tried to do our best in there to show them it’s not gong to be easy against us. I think we just like to steal wins from top teams and show that you can never underestimate your rivals.”
Fraser Valley clung to a five-point lead at the half, up 37-32. Nikki Cabuco hit from long range to start the third quarter the Cascades but it didn’t take long for the T-wolves to come back with a flurry. Back-to-back threes from Lucy Guan and Landry, who added some tough rebounding, set the stage for Shakirova’s jumper that tied the game at 40.
VanBruinessen continued to fight for rebounds and a UNBC stop led to another Landry bucket and a pair of foul shots from Shakirova that put UNBC ahead by four with five minutes left in the quarter. UNBC’s inconsistent foul shooting allowed the Cascades to stay within striking range and they went into the fourth quarter trailing 50-46 but could not reel in their opponents.
Deanna Tuchscherer, the Cascades’ scoring leader, was held without a point in that pivotal third quarter and got her team within two points to start the final frame and Natalie Rathler tied it a couple minutes into the quarter. UNBC was up by one with four minutes left when Anastasia Soltes used her speed to get free to the net to increase the gap and the T-wolves continued to punish Fraser Valley from the foul line the rest of the way. They made 25 of their 35 foul shots in the game.
“They came out today and they were ready to compete and I didn’t have my team ready to go today,” said Cascades head coach Al Tuchscherer. “It’s a bit disappointing because there were some things on the line for us today. We’ll probably be a three seed now, so that makes things tougher for us, but we’re a young team and we’ve got to learn these lessons the hard way sometimes.”
The T-wolves lost the first game of the season series with Fraser Valley, 73-48 back on Oct. 30 in Abbotsford.
“This one was important, they had the best record and they’re supposed to be the number one team in Canada and maybe host the Final Four and now they’re not,” said T-wolves head coach Sergey Shchepotlin. “I’m happy with how we played. Their team is much taller and tougher than our team and it’s a big difference than our first game against them, when we lost by almost 30 points. I’m proud of the girls. Defence was the key.”
On Feb. 5 in Langley, UNBC topped top-ranked Trinity Western 74-69. That’s two wins against nationally-ranked teams this season, each within the past few weeks, and that should help give the T-wolves some momentum heading into the playoffs.
Both UNBC teams will be back in action Saturday at the NSC against the UVic, a makeup date for games originally scheduled for Jan. 14 that were postponed due to the pandemic. The women start at 1 p.m. and the men take the court at 3 p.m. It will be the final home game for the T-wolves seniors.
