Lady basketballers ready to make their strike

By Sean Nyilassy

The Dinos women’s basketball team kept hopes for clinching the top spot in their division as alive as Bob Barker with a pair of wins against the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns Feb. 3-4.

The Dinos took control of Friday’s game in Lethbridge early and didn’t let up. Our ladies were as ferocious as Russell Crowe in Gladiator. They sliced and diced their way to a 60-34 half time lead, shooting a stupefying 76 per cent from the field.

“We were dominant,” head coach Shawnee Harle barely blushed. “We made more than three quarters of our shots, Lethbridge didn’t know what hit them.”

The Dinos held onto their 26-point lead throughout the second half for an almost triple digit 99-73 win. Are you not entertained?

Lindsay Maundrell scored a game-high 26 points, shooting 61.1 per cent from the floor. Becky Heninger and Michelle Willson were 100 and 71.4 per cent respectively from the field for 15 points each. Katherine Adams drained 10 points and provided six assists in the win.

“We were firing on all cylinders,” Adams gleamed. “It’s fun to go into someone else’s gym and put on a show.”

The teams traveled to Calgary for Saturday’s game in the Jack Simpson Gymnasium. The Dinos decided to make this game a little more of a nail-biter–to keep the crowd’s attention of course. After flirting back and forth with the lead–a ridiculous nine times–the Pronghorns jumped ahead 38-42 at the halfway point.

The lead changed hands another five times in the second half, with the Dinos taking a 70-69 lead with 3:21 remaining in the game. The Pronghorns tied the game at 71 and again at 73 with just a minute to play. After being fouled with 18 seconds left, Dino Whitney Haswell came through in the clutch, hitting one of her two charity points to give the Dinos a 74-73 win.

Adams led the Dinos with 15 points. Maundrell and Haswell added 13 and 11 points respectively while hauling down seven boards each. Tanya Hautala snuck in 11 points and four assists.

“If you look at who we had on the floor and how we were forced to play because of foul trouble, you’d have to say it was a great win on Saturday,” Harle beamed. “That kind of game helps us prepare for playoffs better than a 26-point blowout.”

“The part of consistency that has improved the most has been the bench play,” she added. “That’s what’s made us more consistent.”

With these wins, the Dinos women’s basketball team’s future is still in their own hands. And despite their stellar record, Maundrell feels no differently.

“It just feels like a regular season with ups and downs,” she admits. “But it feels like we’ve been able to gut it out more.”

They enter their final weekend with a 13-5 record–good enough for second in Canada West’s mountain division–and have won 12 of their last 13 regular season games plus three non-conference games over Christmas. Their opponent: the 15-3 division-leading University of Saskatchewan Huskies. A pair of road wins Feb. 11-12 would give the Dinos the top spot due to their better +/- points ratio.

“After losing the first four games of the season, I didn’t expect to go on as big a run as we did,” Harle reminisced. “But when you look at the players we have and their character, they’ve earned it and worked hard for this.”