Women’s basketball head coach Michele Belanger got her players to crush the RMC Paladins 67-25 Friday night at the Athletic Centre the opportunity to see what work needs to be done during the final three weeks of the regular season before the OUA playoffs begin. Belanger was pleased with the results of her team’s latest victory,
“I think they’re working really hard,” she said. “I hope that we can get a little more communicative out on the court, that would be our biggest weakness right now.”
With three regulars, Alaine Hutton, Amanda Van Leeuwen and Jessica Hiew, sitting out the game to rest up for their Saturday tilt versus Queen’s, the Varsity Blues still had no trouble in building up a 36-17 halftime advantage. The Blues were led in scoring by cocaptain Christine Cho’s 13 points, while Cassandra White led RMC with five points at the half. In the second half Belanger started her bench players, and was rewarded with a stellar defensive performance. The Paladins shot only 16 per cent from the field in the second half, good for eight points.
Cho finished with a game-high 18 points in only 22 minutes, while Ilana Weissberger pulled down eight rebounds. White, despite getting no second-half points, still led her team with five points, while teammate Kalaneet Malik led the Paladins with seven rebounds. Rookie forward and player of the game, Allie Collyer, took advantage of her increased minutes by planting herself down low and posting up the Paladins for three straight field goals while her bench cheered her on. Cho saw the performance of the bench as a good indication of the skill level on her team.
“Our team is pretty deep and this proves it. Everyone contributed,” Cho said. “We really try and take it one game at a time, but it was good to get everybody into the game.”
Looking ahead after Saturday’s game versus Queen’s, the Blues have a tough schedule to close out the 2007-2008 regular season with four of their last six games coming against York and Laurentian, two teams battling it out with the Blues for the top spot in the OUA east. Coach Belanger sees next Saturday’s game at York University versus the Yeomen as their biggest test.
“We’re going through a stretch with four tough games (versus York and Laurentian), two of which are on the road,” Belanger said. “It’s a test to find out whether or not we’re strong enough mentally to go into someone else’s gym, particularly York […] and beat them.” Cho also sees York as the key matchup. “We know Laurentian and York are really good teams and York, they basically pride themselves on their defense and playing together as a team,” Cho said. “So it’s something that we recognize because it’s against a team we’ve played in the past.”
The Varsity Blues basketball coaches declared a “white-out” before the game, where all Varsity Blues fans were asked to wear white to support the Blues’ playoff bid. Clearly the message had not caught on yet, as few fans showed up and even fewer wore white. Cho believes that message will catch once Blues return for their final two regular season home games, on Feb. 8 and 9.
“Our next home game is in a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to get more fans out and plus they will be better games,” Cho laughed. “So as far as the white-out goes, it’ll happen when everybody knows more about it, especially the students, because there wasn’t a huge fan base tonight.”
