Coming off the holiday break, the Laurier women’s basketball team were looking to carry their momentum from 2016 into 2017, playing the No. 2 ranked Carleton Ravens and the Ottawa Gee-Gees. They kicked off the new year with their game against the Ravens Friday night.
The Hawks played the Ravens close for much of the game, but Heather Lindsay of Carleton proved she was too much to handle as she put her team on her back with a dominant 34 points and 10 rebounds as Carleton won 71-60.
Next up were the Ottawa Gee-Gees who were also looking to bounce back from a loss. This was a defensive game from the jump, as both teams struggled to do much offensively, as it was a very low scoring affair.
The first quarter started out with both teams struggling to score, as the game was tied at 2-2 until about the 5:11 mark. From that point on, both teams found their way a little bit offensively, as the score was 13-11 by the end of the first, with Irena Rynkiewicz leading the way for the Hawks with 5 points.
Ottawa came out strong in the second quarter, going on a 7-1 run in the first 3 minutes.
The Gee-Gees began to take control of the game from there, as they got out to a 10 point lead by the 5:27 mark and led 26-17 by halftime.
Coming out of halftime, neither team scored until Laurier’s Lauren Jameison nailed a jump shot.
The third quarter belonged to the Golden Hawks, as they outscored Ottawa 13-6 and came back from being down 10 at one point in the quarter, to only being down two going into the fourth.
In the fourth quarter, the game stayed close, as both teams traded buckets for much of the quarter.
This was the case until the 2:09 mark, when Brooklynn McAlear-Fanus hit a three, putting Ottawa up by three.
Nicole Morrison followed that with a jumper to bring Laurier within one. Amelie Hachey would then answer back with a jumper of her own, to put Ottawa up 43-40 with 1:25 left.
Laurier could not recover after that, as Kellie Forand hit two free throws to secure the win for Ottawa by the score of 45-40.
Head coach Paul Falco said that the biggest concern was that they lost their shooting touch.
“Two games, I think we had some really good looks for people who we want shooting those shots and we weren’t able to knock them down. I think some of that is probably a lack of reps coming off of Christmas holiday, didn’t get a lot of shots up in our own gym, unfortunately, and we need to get back to having people in a rhythm offensively, shooting the shots that are high percentage,” he said.
Defensively, Falco said the team did a good job.
“To keep a team to 45 points, usually you think you’re gonna be in good shape. But I think the other thing we were missing offensively was our transition game,” he said.
“We just played two teams that are historically, two of the better defensive teams in the OUA and they were able to negate us in a lot of areas, especially in the transition area and we had to rely on a lot of half-court offence and were either not able to get enough good looks or when we got the good looks, we weren’t able to make the shots.”
It does not get any easier from here for the Golden Hawks as they are set to try and regain form as they play the No. 3 ranked team in the nation, the McMaster Marauders, tonight at Hamilton Burridge Gymnasium.