Women's basketball beats Lakehead twice
By Michal Tellos
News Editor
February 3, 2010
 Head coach Chantal Vallee’s women’s Lancers basketball team continued their OUA domination last weekend with two at-home wins over the Lakehead Thunderwolves, with a 68-61 win on Friday, and a 61-60 win on Saturday.
The women still sit atop the OUA standings, with a 15-1 record, and they are ranked third in Canada.
In both games, the Lancers came out with guns blazing, as they had dominating first quarters in terms of scoring.
However, they also allowed Lakehead to creep back in each second and third quarter as well, and this inconsistency is something that Vallee would like to work on.
“It’s up and down. We might have a slow start but a great second quarter. The last few games have been great starts but a slow third quarter or slow second quarter. It’s hard,” she said, adding that sometimes the team gets away from what it does well.
“We’ve taken a good lead in the past two games going into the half,” she said.
“Those are great leads. We obviously have a strong enough team and we should coast from there, but we let them come back to us. We have to work on that,” she added.
The Lancers continued to display the amount of teamwork that goes into their wins, as over the course of the two games, every active player on the roster logged minutes and got on the stat sheet somehow.
Vallee knew that each game would be a close game.
“We knew Lakehead was going to be a really, really good team. They split with every good team in the OUA west. We expected two pretty tough games,” she said.
The second game was nearly too close, as the Lancers were down a handful of times in the second half.
Vallee was not worried, explaining that the team has been in close games several times this season already.
In both games, the Thunderwolves were very reliant upon three-point shooting, but this is something that Vallee is comfortable with.
“We’re guarding the three much better than we used to. I think we’re getting the job done the way we want to with guarding the three, and we have been for quite a while,” she said.
Statistical leaders of the weekend include Shavaun Reaney, who netted 19 points in Friday’s game, and second-year Bojana Kovacevic who had nine and eight rebounds in the two games, respectively.
Reaney only sat out for four minutes of Friday’s entire game.
Vallee noted that the team had a bit of trouble stopping Lakehead’s Tasia Mckenna in the second game, as she led all scorers with 20 points.
The Lancers will next face the Laurier Golden Hawks at home again on Wednesday, Feb. 3, at 6 p.m.
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