Men’s: Chargers shock Eagles

By Kyle Benning [sports bureau chief]

The Kwantlen men’s basketball season has taken a turn for the worst as the team lost twice against Camosun on Nov. 26 and 27.

Friday’s game finished with the team losing 78-68, while they lost 75-67 on Saturday.

Kwantlen’s Harpreet Randhawa played exceptionally well on both sides of the ball, and was the Eagles’ highest scorer in both games.

The Eagles entered this two-game home stand with a 1-4 record looking to push higher in the league standings. Kwantlen started the game poorly trailing 14-6 after the first quarter.

That lead increased as the quarter dragged on as the Chargers took a 14-point lead.

But the Eagles got a hold on the game and went into halftime tied at 26 thanks to Randhawa’s 11 points and six rebounds, and a lot of crowd support.

The most disturbing statistic at the break was that the Kwantlen bench only scored two points, while the Camosun bench scored 16.

Following the intermission, the Chargers came out strong and scored 26 points to the Eagles 14 to take a 12-point lead after the third quarter.

Head coach Bernie Love seemed to rally his troops before the fourth, because they came out and scored 26 of their own in the final quarter. However, they could only match the Chargers in the fourth quarter.

The Eagles failed to contain Camosun guard Blake Mansbridge who put away a game-high 27 points, and was thee-for-three beyond the arc.

The entire Kwantlen team was 16.7 per cent for three-point shooting, scoring twice from long range.

The bench didn’t do the Eagles too many favours as they picked up six points after the final buzzer, while the Chargers bench put up 41.

Randhawa finished the day with a team-high 22 points, nine rebounds, four steals and two blocks.

The Saturday game tipped off at 3 p.m. with Kwantlen starting slowly again. After 10 minutes, they trailed 15-9.

Camosun started to pull away, and took a 10-point lead during the second quarter. But again, Kwantlen fought back and went into halftime trailing by six.

The Eagles were having trouble containing Charger forward Ryan Erikson. He almost put up a double-double with 11 points and nine rebounds after 20 minutes.
Mike Corcoran was putting in a hard shift for the Eagles picking up four rebounds, three being offensive, at the half.

That being said, the Eagles hadn’t scored from distance in the entire first half, throwing up eight three-pointers. After the break, the Chargers took off and put away 21 points to the Eagles 15.

Mansbridge came back to haunt the Ealges putting away 17 of his game-high 22 points in the second half.

Kwantlen played very well picking up rebounds and boxing out assuring that Camosun only had seven offensive rebounds throughout the game.

However, the Eagles were 6.7 per cent from beyond the arc and 45.2 per cent at the line. It looked like their poor shooting resulted in the team losing by eight points in another tight affair.