The women’s basketball team continues to be unstoppable this season, with victories over the Nipissing Lakers and Laurentian Voyageurs this weekend putting them at 14-0.
Nipissing stood no match for Queen’s on Friday night, as they fell 96-46 to the Gaels. Queen’s dominated in terms of points off turnovers, with 41 compared to the Lakers’ 21, and in bench points, outperforming the Lakers 51-29. Despite this one-sided performance, head coach Dave Wilson wasn’t entirely pleased.
“I thought we were very sloppy with our defence,” Wilson said.
The Gaels gave up 29 points off turnovers, which isn’t typical of this defensively-focused team. For Wilson, his team will need to pay more attention on defence when playing Ryerson and U of T next week.
“It will be a very difficult game,” Wilson said. “They’re a well-rounded team and a well-coached team so we have to be at our best. The performances we gave this weekend will not be enough. And U of T, one of the more athletic teams, gives us trouble because of athleticism, so it’s a different style of game that we must play against Ryerson.”
The game against Laurentian on Saturday was a closer matchup. While the Gaels finished the game with a 69-43 victory, the first half was neck-and-neck. Queen’s was down by one going into the second quarter, and up by only five going into the half.
“Our second quarter defence was much better; we only gave up nine points and so that’s what we talked about at halftime,” Wilson said.
There were no significant runs in the third but the Gaels managed to stretch their lead to double digits and go into the fourth with a 14-point lead.
“We wanted a good start to the third quarter just to set the tone and create the spread in the game and get it over with. We didn’t quite do that.”
Cautious as Wilson may be with regards to maintaining a lead, the Gaels limited the Voyageurs to only four points in the last quarter, in comparison to the Gaels’ 15 points. However, Queen’s only shot 39.4 per cent from the field, while their defence limited the opposition to 29.8 per cent from the field. The Gaels head coach knows going into next week his team must shoot better from the floor.
“We weren’t sharp in our shooting and some of that’s concentration, some of that’s fatigue. That’s not an excuse.”
Central to going into the challenging weekend ahead is learning from these wins. In their first matchup of the weekend, Queen’s will play Ryerson, the seventh-ranked team in Canada.
“It’s the ability to stay focused and that’s where we waivered a little bit, you know getting careless with the ball, getting greedy on defence. That’s the thing that we must learn to be better at so that we develop a consistency in our play that is forty minutes every game, regardless of opponent.”
Tags
Dave Wilson, Laurentian Voyageurs, Nipissing Lakers, recap, women's basketball
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