
Coming off a loss against the eighth ranked McMaster Marauders on Jan. 24, the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks womenโs basketball team was looking to take care of business against the Waterloo Warriors. With their previous matchup ending with a final score of 67-50 for the Hawks, expectations were not too high for the Warriors, but this game turned out to be more interesting than people thought.
Laurier started out the game quicker than the last time on both ends of the floor.
Led by Jill Condron, who scored seven points, along with a strong defensive showing, they finished the quarter up 15-8.
The second quarter didnโt seem to change much for the Warriors as the Golden Hawks stifled them, pushing the lead to 12 at certain points of the quarter. With defensive consistency having been in need of an improvement, the Hawks showed they could make it tough on their opponents.
With turnovers (11) being the only question mark offensively and holding the Warriors to 5-30 shooting for 20 first half points, this game looked to be on its way to another big win for the Hawks.
โThe big thing was, defensively, in the first half โ I know the first quarter we held them to eight points which is a good number,โ coach Falco said.
Coming out of halftime, for the first few minutes of the third, the Warriors were looking to make a push. While the Hawks were able to hold their ground for about half the quarter, the narrative of this game changed quickly.
Down 41-30 with 4:32 left, the Warriors went on a 7-0 run to cut the lead to four.
Fast forward to the 8:23 mark of the fourth with Laurier up 55-47, Waterloo went on another 7-0 run to cut the lead to one. After a back and forth, with the lead staying between one and three points, neither team scored from the 4:47 mark to the 2:58 mark, with Laurier going up 60-58.
Both teams then went scoreless for over two minutes until Nicole Morrison finally iced the game at the charity strike to make it 62-58 at the six second mark.
โObviously we were hoping to win by more but we canโt take any team lightly. I thought we started out okay. Then the second half, they started hurting us on the dribble drive and they got really hot shooting from the perimeter so that was a bit of a struggle,โ head coach Paul Falco said.
Finishing with 24 points, Nicole Morrison became the third Laurier player and fifteenth player in OUA history to reach the 1300-point mark in a career finishing the game with 1307.
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