Slow start proves costly for Bobcat women

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This article was published 06/01/2023 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The UBC Thunderbirds weren’t about to let the Brandon Bobcats ease into the second semester.

They came out flying, with electric offence and lockdown defence, doing almost all the damage in their 76-41 victory in the first quarter of their Canada West women’s basketball game at the Healthy Living Centre on Friday.

“They came out with more intensity than we did,” said Bobcats head coach James Bambury. “I think we were back on our heels too much and their on-ball pressure created a lot of opportunity for them and we didn’t match until the end of the first quarter.

“It’s always disappointing, from someone who relies on as much energy as I do as a human being, I pride myself on the energy we can bring to the table and we just didn’t bring it.”

No one really stood out. Winnipegger Olivia Weekes had a game-high 12 points for UBC (6-3) while Reetta Tulkki paced Brandon (0-11) with 10 but took 14 shots.

The Thunderbirds swarmed every Bobcat ball handler and limited the hosts to just seven field-goal attempts in the first quarter. On the other end, they seldom took a contested jumper, making 13 of 20 in an offensive explosion.

Brandon’s first point was a Kelsey Starchuck free throw more than five minutes in, and it didn’t make a field goal for over seven minutes.

When the Bobcats pressed, the T-Birds broke double teams with ease and found German forward Mona Berlitz for easy layups. She had six points in the quarter as the T-Birds led 31-5.

Weekes sat most of the frame with two fouls but it didn’t matter.

Thunderbirds coach Erin McAleenan turned to her bench for much of the second quarter and the Bobcats enjoyed a little extra breathing room. Josie Grift and Sarah Hallett got the offence going with a few put-back buckets. Chelsea Misskey hit an open three, Faith Clearsky added another, and then beat her defender for a contested scoop layup late in the quarter.

Brandon won the second 15-10 and went into halftime down 41-20.

The Bobcats kept battling after the break, capitalizing on a few extra trips to the free-throw line and making some threes to go into the fourth down 55-32.

While a mere consolation victory, Brandon outscored UBC over the middle two quarters.

“It was just them putting pressure on us right from the beginning,” Clearsky said. “For our point guards, they were struggling to get into an offence right away because they pushed up on us quite a bit.

“… It took us sitting down in the team room and talking about what we needed to do as a team and how we have to work together better. It took a lot of communication.”

Brandon ran out of gas, scoring just nine points in the final frame as UBC pulled away as it did in the opening stretch.

The margin didn’t stretch much after the blowout first quarter, but UBC certainly didn’t bring the same intensity afterwards.

Did Brandon improve that much?

“I’ll have to watch the tape back to see the quality of shot they were getting, but what I started seeing was the quality of shot we were getting went up immensely,” Bambury said.

“We started getting plays at the rim, we started getting plays on the perimeter and that made a really big difference for our offence just seeing we can get open, quality shots and that’s what we weren’t getting in the first quarter.”

The teams meet again today at 5 p.m.

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