Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
They got to the final through the back door but their timely finish left the Prince George Timberwolves hogging the spotlight at the 3D Basketball Western Canadian under-17 girls championship in Langley.
Down 28-19 at halftime to Calgary Basketball Academy (CBA) in the tournament final last Sunday, the T-wolves switched to a zone defence and with five minutes left the Prince George club team was ahead 42-41. Then Madison Landry and Nicola Erricson got hot from three-point range in the late stages to put the wraps on a 52-45 victory.
"I was actually pretty surprised, we just competed and played for fun and got rewarded," said Erricson. "We were all tired after six games in three days and Calgary didn't have to play (Sunday morning). Once we switched to zone defence in the second half they were kind of stunned and didn't know what to do."
Erricson said the key when they were down was not to panic.
"Madison and I had to step it up a bit and we just started taking open shots," said Erricson. "We just played more relaxed because if we got too excited on the court they would just steal the ball and capitalize off of that."
The 13-player T-wolves squad included: Landry, Erricson, Gabrielle Caillier, Lauren Chrobot, Erin Cole, Nicola Erricson, Kyla Giesbrecht, Alanna Koopmans, Danae Koopmans, Madison Landry, Alexis Magrath, Brooklyn Nicholson, Hannah Rogers, Alina Shakirova, and Kassie Watts. All but Landry and Erricson, who played for the Duchess Park secondary school senior team this past season and are going into Grade 12 next year, played last year for junior teams.
"Maddy and Nicola were the older two and they brought a lot of leadership and calm to the team," said T-wolves assistant coach Catherine Erricson. "The other girls stepped in and played their role and everybody played every half, every game. It's about development and it was a good opportunity."
Prince George finished third in its pool with a 2-2 record, losing round-robin games to True North of Coquitlam and CBA.
The loss to True North came with 1.9 seconds left when the Coquitlam team hit a three-pointer to break a tie. But the T-wolves responded Sunday morning with a 57-43 win over True North to advance to the gold-medal game.
In the final, CBA found holes in the T-wolves' man-to-man defence in the first half but it was a different story in the final 32 minutes.
"We had to make some big adjustments because they like to do a full-court trapping press and what made the difference was when we changed our defence," said coach Erricson. "We went into a 1-3-1 zone, which the girls had never practiced, and it created a lot of havoc for them because they were hurting us bigtime with man-to-man.
"Everybody adjusted and we were able to hold them back."
Shakirova, who was one of the T-wolves' strongest players in a series of games in late May at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, left for her home in Russia and missed the Langley tournament.
Coach Sergey Shchepotkin, head coach of the UNBC women's basketball team, also returned to Russia for a visit and did not make the trip to Langley.
