Women’s basketball feel the blues

Gaels’ season ends in quarter-final upset

Image by: Christine Blais

The women’s basketball team fell short in OUA quarter-final action on Wednesday night, losing 62-54 to the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, subsequently ending their season. The regular season saw the Gaels post a 13-9 record and finish third in the OUA East before being upset by the sixth-place Blues.

Guard Brittany Moore led the way for Queen’s posting 19 points and 7 rebounds in the losing effort. Forward Erin Skippon, suiting up in what may have been her last game in a Queen’s uniform, added 12 points and 9 rebounds.

At halftime the two teams stood deadlocked at 23 points apiece, but Toronto jumped out to a 46-32 lead late in the third quarter. Despite fighting back to within two points, the Queen’s comeback ultimately fell short.

Despite the outcome, head coach Dave Wilson said he was proud of his team’s play.

“I thought we played hard,” Wilson said. “It really came down to the third quarter, starting off the second half being very flat-footed defensively. Toronto did a really good job of getting at us quickly and getting to the rim. We spent the rest of the game trying to recover from that. I thought we did a really good job recovering from it, but just not enough to get over the hump.”

Wilson added that his team showed resilience to fight back from such a large deficit.

“The kids are tough and they don’t quit in a situation like that,” he said. “What hurt us out of that was that it forced us to play some players longer than we really wanted to play them. So coming down the stretch of the game, their legs weren’t there as much as we would’ve liked them to be.”

With the season over, Wilson said his young team performed well above expectations.

“I think the most important thing is that we grew as a team over the year,” he said. “No one at the beginning of the season would’ve picked us to finish third in the East, not even close. I think that the growth that we had during the year bodes very well for us in the future.”

Wilson said the team will use last night’s game as a learning experience.

“The amount that they learned in the time that we had with them was very encouraging,” he said. “When we go back in to next year, we’re not starting all over again, we’ve got some things in place that have been very successful. If we come into next season with good off-season training, we’ll be in pretty good shape.”

Moving on from the team will be veterans Maddie Soye and Katie Guthrie, while Skippon has yet to commit on whether or not she will return for another season with the Tricolour.

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