The women’s basketball team found out what happens when you enter a hostile gym facing a division foe and don’t bring your best game. On Friday, U of T lost an exasperating 66-65 game to the Ryerson Rams (4-2) before an unofficial attendance of 210. The game was important, with the 3-2 Blues hoping to stay close to Laurentian (6-0) in the OUA East. Hampered by poor free throw shooting, inconsistent defense and incongruent offensive play all game long, the loss dropped the Blues into fourth place.
Despite their shortcomings, the Blues held a 64-63 lead with 35.1 seconds remaining, the result of an impressive 13-6 run by the Blues over a seven and a half minute span.
But the Rams responded quickly after U of T sneaked into the lead, with Teaka Grizzle draining a 15 foot jumper from the top of the key. Fouled on the play by Toronto’s Vanessa Richardson, she calmly completed the three-point play to give Ryerson a 66-64 lead they would not give up.
“We’ve had opportunities at the foul line to do the job and we haven’t done it,” said head coach Michele Belanger of 60 per cent accuracy (9 of 15) from the charity stripe.
“We didn’t have an offensive flow to our game at all today. [We] kept pushing further and further away instead of cutting into the holes…Our perimeter game has had to work a little harder and they’re not in sync right now.”
All of these problems are ones the Blues have wrestled with all year. The nail in the coffin, though, proved to be the hard time the Blues had shutting down Ryerson’s top scorers.
Coming into the game Tamara Alleyne-Gitt (20 points), Ashley Keohan (15 points) and Karina Navarro (10 points) were singled out as key threats and Blues defenders were unsuccessful at preventing them from getting good looks at the basket.
“Theye weren’t too many positives. We did come back from a bad first half,” said Elanna Robson (13 points, 6 steals) of the early play that translated into a 40-34 halftime deficit. “Our strength is our transition and penetration and we didn’t do that enough today.”
It didn’t help that post players Armour and Paula Romkey both had to ride the pine for stretches in the second half after each ran into foul trouble early. Perimeter players such as Robson, Holly Pagnan (14 points, 4 steals) and Richardson (13 points, 4 steals) stepped up in their absence helping to spark Toronto’s late run.
The Blues will next travel to Ottawa for their upcoming games against Carleton (2-4) and the Gee Gees (0-6) on Friday November 30 and Saturday December 1 respectively.
