The Victoria Vikes defence stacks up better statistically than any of their peers in the Canada West Universities Athletic Association men's basketball league.
Preventing points has not been a problem for the Vikes, who came to Prince George on the weekend as the No. 5-ranked team in the country. But scoring, well that's been a source of frustration in Victoria. Before they took the UNBC Timberwolves, they were averaging less than 70 points per game, 15th worst in the 16-team league.
After scoring 85 points in an 18-point win over the T-wolves Friday, the Vikes offence reached a season-high Saturday while beating UNBC 93-67.
"As odd as it might be after watching us the past couple nights, we've really struggled to score," said Vikes coach Craig Beaucamp. "This weekend it was nice to be able to score consistently. We were good on offence, but I thought UNBC was real competitive. Last night they had us on our heels, they were trapping us, trying to speed the game up, and they keep playing hard all the time. I didn't think this game was over until the last few minutes."
Victoria demonstrated to the fans at the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre it has speed to burn, slick shooters like Terrell Evans, Reiner Theil and Kyle Peterson, and six-foot-10 centre Chris McLaughlin casting a long shadow, which proved too much to handle for the T-wolves.
Evans, the Vikes leading scorer, improved his scoring average with a 25-point effort. McLaughlin blocked shots and was unstoppable at times around the net to finish with 18 points, while Peterson had 13 and Theil, with three long-range bombs, contributed 11 points.
"They're a special team and whenever we made mistakes they found ways to capitalize and find their open shooters and make shots, and the big kid [McLaughlin] really gave us trouble," said UNBC head coach Todd Jordan. "If we left him in single coverage he scored and if we doubled him he kicked it out and they found shooters."
Franck Olivier Kouagnia collected 16 points and Gagan Sahota, hit for 11 to lead the UNBC offence. The Vikes were ahead by 25 early in the fourth quarter when UNBC cut the gap to 16 thanks to some timely buckets from Kouagnia, Sahota and Dan Stark, but that's as close as it got down the stretch. Charles Barton, who had 21 on Friday, was limited to just four points Saturday.
"That's a tough loss, we should have made it closer," said UNBC forward Devin McMurtry, who played well with seven points and nine rebounds despite his breathing problems fighting with a nasty flu bug all weekend. "UVic's a really good team and you'd expect us to lose two games but I wanted it to be more of a dogfight. With these top CIS teams, all you can do is go out and try to humble them and I thought we could have done that better this weekend."
The win improved the Vikes' season record to 12-2, tops in the Pacific Conference. The two losses dimmed UNBC's playoff hopes as they dropped to 4-10, seventh in the Pacific.
n After a 10-point win Friday, the women Vikes continued their success with UNBC, scoring a 67-54 victory to improve their Canada West record to 9-5. UVic centre Sarah Semeniuk set the tone early with nine first-quarter points for a 22-8 lead. Jenna Bugiardini and Shaylyn Crisp each finished with 14 points for the visitors, while fifth-year guard Mercedes Van Koughnett T-wolves accounted for nearly half of UNBC's point total with 26 in 35 minutes of playing time. She also picked up nine rebounds, five assists and three steals, tops among T-wolves.
"I think we showed a lot of heart this weekend, we knew it was going to be two really hard games with Victoria coming in and we just wanted to show a lot of fight out there and not give up and I was happy with that," said Van Koughnett. "Everybody can score on that team, everybody's a threat and they work well as a team."
Guard Jen Bruce, a five-year veteran and one UNBC's top shooters, is still out with a concussion, and while that hurt the T-wolves' bottom line it did open the door for rookies Cassie Rerick and Mavia Nijjer. Both played over half the game. Rerick was strong on defence with five turnovers and two steals and Nijjer responded with nine points.
'Victoria's one of the best teams in Canada so I'm really happy with the way the girls played this weekend, I'm happy with the defence and how my first-year girls progressed," said UNBC women's head coach Sergey Shchepotkin.
