Women’s basketball drop two spots in OUA standings on final weekend

Queen’s lose to both Ryerson and Toronto

Emily Hazlett played 38 minutes on Saturday night.
Image supplied by: Journal File Photo
Emily Hazlett played 38 of 40 minutes on Saturday night.

Despite coming into the weekend with the third best record in the OUA, women’s basketball finished off the regular season with two defeats at home.

They lost 66-61 against the Ryerson Rams on Friday, followed by a 75-70 defeat on Saturday to the University of Toronto Varsity Blues.

The Gaels will need to shrug these losses off fast — the playoffs start this week. Dropping to fifth place in the playoff seed means the Gaels don’t get the bye, and therefore must play this Wednesday night again against Laurentian in the first round. 

“This is just something that we’re going to have to battle through,” Gaels head coach Dave Wilson said.

“That’s the drag of not getting the bye: you don’t get much rest. We’re going to turn around and play in a couple of days … we’ve got to get ready in a hurry.”  

However, the Gaels are still going into the playoffs with a 15-5 record.

Things got off to a rough start against the Rams on Friday, with the score 11-0 for Ryerson until the three-minute mark, when the Gaels finally scored a bucket. Not once did Queen’s lead against the Rams, though they made a push in the final quarter to cut the lead to four points. However, the Rams proved too much and the Gaels couldn’t break the lead any further.

Coming out of this tough loss against the Rams, the Gaels didn’t play as themselves on Saturday against the Varsity Blues.

“We’re tired,” Wilson said. “We took the day off on Monday but then in practice we seemed a little bit flat and that caught up with us.”

The Blues’ defence was tight and lively on Saturday night, and it posed a significant problem for Queen’s offence. The first half saw eight lead changes, with the Gaels trailing only 29-30 going into the half.

“They are an interesting team to match up against because they don’t have a great deal of size,” Wilson said. “But what they lack in size they make up for in scrappiness.”

“And when you have a scrappy team like that it means they’re getting a hand on [the ball], so it caused us to turn over a lot more then I would have certainly liked.”

The Gaels lagged in the third, dropping down to a 10-point deficit, however they managed to cut the gap to four points going into the fourth. 

While the Blues came into the fourth with more intensity than the Gaels, Queen’s made a push in the final minutes of the game. Hazlett hit an unorthodox yet impressive three-pointer to cut the Blues’ lead to two with 15 seconds remaining. However, U of T hit a few foul shots and put the game out of reach.

“[That was done] only through energy that we got in spurts today,” Wilson said, referencing the three-pointer made in the final seconds. “And I think that’s the biggest issue right now: we’re just tired.”

Tags

Ryerson Rams, University of Toronto, women's basketball

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