Wilfrid Laurier men’s basketball head coach Peter Campbell looked back on the 2012-13 season after Wednesday night’s 81-75 loss to the Brock Badgers.
“If you’d said in September that we were going to finish exactly where we finished last year with this team compared to last year’s team, you’d have said no way,” he said.
In the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) West quarterfinal last week, Laurier hosted the Badgers after finishing fourth in the OUA West, winning four of their last five contests.
It was quite the surprise for the Hawks after posting a 2-6 record before the winter break, with their only wins coming against the Toronto Varsity Blues and the York Lions.
But after the Badgers failed to secure home court advantage in the final week and the Hawks dominated the Western Mustangs, WLU played the surprising host to a first-round playoff game.
However, in a game where the Hawks had an eight-point lead, Brock was able to climb back and advance to the OUA West semifinal.
The loss ends the Hawks’ season, however with everyone potentially returning for Laurier, Campbell will focus on improving the depth of the team.
“I don’t think we had a great season,” he said. “We struggled a lot. There a lot of things that we didn’t do well, but we got better over the course of the season and I think with everybody coming back, if they make a decision to get better, we’ll put them through some situations so they can get better and we should be a better basketball team come October.”
“[It’ll be] just another year for me,” added fourth-year star Max Allin, who in the final game of the year played a full 40 minutes and recorded 23 points and eight rebounds.
“I’ll just go home and train and get as good as I can and hopefully help this team win next year.”
As for the women’s team, the Hawks finished fifth in the OUA West and travelled to London for the OUA West quarterfinal against Western on Wednesday night.
In their third meeting in less than two weeks, the Mustangs and Hawks again played down to the wire, matching nearly point-for-point.
However, the fourth-seeded Mustangs defeated Laurier 58-54 to advance to the OUA West semifinal and finish the Hawks’ season.
The loss came just four days after Laurier pulled out a one point win off a basket by fifth-year Amber Hillis with 12.1 seconds remaining on the clock versus those same Mustangs.
“I think for us, it’s consistency,” women’s head coach Paul Falco said. “You can see that when we’re good, we can play with pretty much anybody. But it’s a matter of doing it consistency for 40 minutes.
“Obviously we take some confidence from [the win against Western], the way we battled back late in that fourth quarter to get the victory.”
Laurier will only lose two members of their squad, including Hillis and fourth-year Alena Luciani.
