Women’s basketball bows out

Gaels lose 67-58 to fifth-seeded Carleton

Despite their higher seeding and home-court advantage, the women’s basketball team fell 67-58 to the Carleton Ravens Saturday afternoon at Bartlett Gym.

The coaching match-up was an interesting battle of youth against experience: Carleton head coach Taffe Charles is in his first year at the helm of the school’s women’s program, while Queen’s Dave Wilson has 26 years of head-coach experience behind him.

After the game, Charles said he was confident going into the match that the Ravens could win.

“Absolutely,” he said. “In the last month and a half, we’ve played really, really well. … We’ve come around, we’ve figured out the way I want to play the game, and it’s a testament to the girls—they trusted in what we want to do, and they executed the game plan.” Carleton came out flying and quickly piled up a 12-4 lead, which they expanded to 24-15 by the end of the end of the first quarter.

Queen’s fought back after that and outscored the Ravens 17-13 in the third. The first quarter lead proved to be the eventual difference between the teams, however.

An unexpected star aided the Raven’s win. The Gaels held Carleton’s leading scorer Kelly Lyons to just six points, but Ravens guard Tanya Perry came through with a huge game-high 28 points to lead the Ravens to victory.

Charles said he had hoped for a strong performance from Perry.

“She’s an OUA all-star, so I expected her to lead this team,” he said. “She’s been here when we haven’t won, and I told her, ‘Learn from your mistakes, and let’s get a win here.’”

The Ravens’ strong first-half shooting was key to their eventual victory—they hit 56 per cent of their field goal attempts, an impressive 55 per cent of their three-point attempts and 83 per cent of their free throws in the first two quarters.

By comparison, Queen’s made 39 per cent of their first-half field goals, 25 per cent of their first-half three pointers, and 78 per cent of their first-half free throws.

Queen’s head coach Dave Wilson said the Gaels couldn’t match the Ravens’ outstanding shooting early in the game.

“I’ve got to give credit to Carleton, quite frankly,” he said. “They shot the ball extremely well, especially in the first half. … We just had a hard time recovering from that, and you’ve got to give credit to Tanya Perry—that’s one hell of a ball game.”

Wilson said the team focused on shutting down Lyons, but they were also concerned about Perry, who was Carleton’s second-leading scorer going in with an average 11.6 points per game.

“We obviously didn’t get that job done.”

Wilson said the Gaels came close, but couldn’t finish the job.

“We kept getting [the lead down] to five,” he said. “We got it to five a number of times, but then we’d make a critical error on defense to give a little bit of momentum back to Carleton, and I thought they did a great job of capitalizing on that. When we made a mistake, they made us pay for it.”

Guard Brittany Moore led the Gaels with 24 points, including five three-pointers. Moore said the Gaels gave everything they had.

“We missed a couple things on defence, but I think overall we played really hard,” she said. “We put a lot of effort into it, and I think the graduating players really showed a lot of leadership and played really well. … It’s just a really tough loss.”

It was fifth-year player and captain Sarah Barnes’ final game for the Gaels. She scored 11 points and added six rebounds.

Moore said Barnes’ leadership will be sorely missed next year.

“She really pulled us together during tough times,” she said.

Wilson said the team hopes to retain much of its core for next year.

“We don’t necessarily lose a lot of players,” he said. “We could just lose Sarah Barnes. We could get everyone else back, but we won’t know that until we know the results of teacher’s college [applications] and stuff like that.”

Anne Murphy and Amanda Northcott are both graduating, but could return if their applications to Queen’s graduate school are accepted.

Wilson said the playing time younger players received this year will also help next year’s team.

“With the experiences our players have gained this year, particularly our young players, I think we’ll be in very good shape down the road.”

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