By Brad Halasz
It was scrappy, it was intense, a nose was broken.
Usually those are terms used to describe a late-round playoff game, but the 100-90 win the University of Calgary Dinos women’s basketball team tallied over the University of Windsor Lancers last Sunday was a meaningless, non-conference pre-season match up.
The win gave Calgary a 3-0 sweep of their own UC Invitational tournament.
“We’ve shown some great tenacity and fight and fire,” said Dinos head coach Shawnee Harle. “If you look at the roster and you look at how many young players we have, to come in to our own tournament and to beat a quality team in the final is above and beyond my expectations.”
Trailing the Lancers by 10 for most of the first half, the fight and fire didn’t seem to come until Harle ignited the team with a boisterous time-out in the final minutes of the second quarter.
“I thought we were getting out competed and I’m learning that when I challenge them to compete harder, they respond,” said Harle.
The reality check worked as Calgary began an offensive onslaught and out scored the Lancers 58-37 in the second half.
“We just felt we had to smarten up and get going otherwise the game was going to get out of our hands,” said fifth-year Dino Whitney Haswell who led the team with 26 points, was 14-18 on free throws and was named tournament MVP.
Veteran Courtney Coyle also helped her team rebound from a mediocre first half by sinking four of seven three point shots and tallying 14 points. Megan Lang and Ashley Hill also stepped up with 17 and 14 points respectively.
The late push by the Dinos took the Lancers off guard as they failed to adjust to the new pace of the game.
“I thought Calgary competed extremely well, they really went at us, they were fighting on the rebounds, they drove on us, credit to them,” said Lancers head coach Chantal Vallee.
The Lancers may have also been shaken by the broken nose of Raelyn Prince in the dying seconds of the second quarter.
“It’s a little bit of adversity, but you start with five players and you end with five players, and we just came together as a team to overcome that and do what we had to do,” said Lancers forward Alisa Wulff, who was named a tournament all star.
While the injury was a set back to Wulff and the Lancers, she did not let that control the mind-set of the team.
“My teammates did a great job of setting screens and getting me the ball when I was on the wing, they did a great job in assisting me with my baskets,” she said.
The game helps set up the season for the Dinos as Harle was pleased with their pre-season efforts and hopes their aggressiveness carries over to the regular season.
“They’re scrappy; I feel like we’re never going to be out of a game,” she said. “I think we’re going to be able to overachieve. With the character we’re showing, I think we’ll be able to win some games that we shouldn’t.”