By Josh Rose
Fridays are when the basketballsaur must hunt or be hunted. Saturdays are when they feast or are feasted upon. This weekend, the women’s Dinos were the predators while the men, unfortunately, were prey. Against the Trinity Western University Spartans, the Dinos produced some mixed results.
Friday’s hunters were the women’s basketball Dinos. However, at halftime the Dinos were only up 26-25. Led by forward Ashley Hill, who had a 34-point night, they went on to defeat the Spartans 80-62. Hill had a chance to break into the U of C’s all-time basketball scorers top three, but no one expected her to crack it in one game. The fifth-year kinesiology student has racked up a grand total of 1,464 points, just 180 shy of the second place Meagan Koch.
On Saturday, the women had a bit of trouble taking over the game in the first half. Down 30-24 at the half the Dinos turned on the pressure during the second half of the game forcing 19 Spartan turnovers. Guard Tamara Jarrett and Hill would lead the Dinos with 17 and 16 points respectively that night to win 70-64.
“Our style of play is to play fast, and we’ve really been finding that we’ve been wearing teams down, particularly in the fourth quarter,” said women’s basketball head coach Shawnee Harle. “We just kept pounding the ball and racing it in transition and Trinity Western got tired. That gave us some opportunities for some easy baskets.”
Shortly after the women’s games, the men got a shot to devour the Spartan ballers, but to no avail. Down 31 points in the third, the men were able to crawl back to within nine by the end of the game. Guard Tyler Fidler netted 24 points and guard Dustin Reding added 17, but they were unable to defend against TWU’s outstanding 52 per cent shooting, half of which was from the perimeter.
The Dinos could not keep up with the Spartans on Saturday and ended up down 22-6 during the first half. Andrew McGuiness notched 20 points with Fidler chipping in 16, taking advantage of a few free throws and turnovers cutting the lead to four at one point. The game would go on to finish with a Spartan victory of 92-77.
“Trinity Western is ranked number five in the nation and even if we had our entire line up, we would have been hard-pressed to win it for sure this year because of our youth,” said men’s basketball head coach Dan Vanhooren.
This weekend, the Dinos travel to Kamloops to take on the Thompson Rivers Wolfpack.