Men’s basketball eliminated from playoffs by Brock Badgers 98-80
Loss marks end of 31-year coaching career for bench boss Peter Campbell
The Wilfrid Laurier men’s basketball team fell to the Brock Badgers on Wednesday night, losing 98-80 to the No. 8 nationally-ranked team in the country. The loss eliminated the Hawks from the Ontario University Athletics playoffs.
It also marked the end of Peter Campbell’s 31-year coaching career, as he played his last game at the Bob Davis Gymnasium, in St. Catharines.
The Hawks kept up with the Badgers in the first quarter, with a performance by Chuder Teny, who scored 10 of his 12 points, and only trailed by a single point by the end of the opening frame. The Badgers got going in the second, and despite putting up 22 points in the starting half, the Hawks were stymied to only 13 in the second quarter. Laurier only shot for 29.4 per cent in the paint, and could only add four three-pointers to that, as they scored 4-of-14 from beyond the arc. By the end of the half, the Badgers held a seven-point lead.
The Hawks came out firing in the third quarter, taking more shots in the paint and kept the Badgers within arms reach of the game. Brock could only maintain a ten point lead, but as the game came down to its final 10 minutes, the Badgers pulled away shooting 56.8 per cent from field-goal range. The Hawks picked up their mid-range game, scoring 43.8 per cent, a significant improvement from the first quarter, but could not keep up with the Badgers.
Matt Chesson led the way for the Hawks in scoring 17 points, with graduating seniors Garrison Thomas and Will Coulthard following with 15 and 14 points respectively. Brock’s Dani Elgadi was a force to be reckoned with, scoring 29 points in 34 minutes of playing time.
The end of the game marked an end of an era, as Coulthard and Campbell leave the Hawks together. In Coulthard’s five-year career, he accumulated a total of 1,594 points, good for third in scoring at Laurier and finished with 147 steals – the most in the school’s history. Campbell finished his 16-year career at Laurier with 164 wins in 363 games, including playoffs.