Hawks crush Gaels in hoops home opener

In front of a packed athletic complex on Friday evening, the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks men’s basketball team showed why there is so much hype surrounding them, beating the Queen’s Gaels by a score of 88-62.

Laurier jumped out to an early lead right away and never surrendered, leading by over 30 points at some stages of the ball game.

However, despite the overwhelming final score, head coach Peter Campbell was not totally impressed with his teams play.

“I thought at times we played really well, and at other times we played like we were ahead by a lot and lost our focus, and we are not good when that happens,” said Campbell.

Despite Campbell’s concerns, the team is in a good position so far and has started the season with a perfect 3-0 record.

One aspect that has the head coach excited is the team’s defence, which held the Gaels in check for the entire evening and also generated points off turnovers.

But the team’s big-time scorers that were so talked about coming into the season were relatively quiet throughout the game, and at times struggled to score points.

“We aren’t playing as well as we want to,” said Campbell. “And we’ve got some big games to come where we will need more out of Harrison, Max [Allin] and hopefully get [Matt] Buckley more involved”.

Fortunately for the Hawks, the team features a strong bench and a lot of secondary players that can score, so even when their superstars are unable to score at the rapid pace fans are used to, the team can still win games.

“One big thing is when teams take away a guy, we have another guy that can step up, which speaks to our depth this year,” said the fifth-year starter, Buckley.

The Hawks next face Royal Military College at 3:00p.m. at Laurier’s Athletic Complex on Saturday, Nov. 19th.