Friday Basketball: Women step up, men lose another
Men’s and women’s teams play some of their best ball all season.
By Lucas Meneses-Skoda
On a night where Kwantlen saw a season-high attendance of 123 people pack into the Surrey campus gym, it also saw both the men’s and women’s teams play some of their best ball all season.
Unfortunately, it came on the last weekend of regular season action.
On Friday Feb. 18, the Eagles took on the Douglas College Royals. The away team tried making the Eagles Nest their own.
Douglas challenged Kwantlen to a fan smackdown – to see who could bring out more fans in support of their teams. The night was filled with fan and mascot competitions, dance-offs and prizes.
Fortunately, Kwantlen won that challenge.
In the first game of the Friday night double-header, the crowd proved to be huge support to the women’s Eagles team, as they outlasted the Royals en route to only their third win of the season by a score of 53-48.
Both teams came into the matchup at 2-14 in the BCCAA standings, but at the end of the night, it was the Eagles ability to put up points off turnovers that led to a sweet-tasting two points.
The Eagles had 31 of their 53 points come off of Douglas turnovers, while the Royals were only able to produce 10.
Leading the way for the Eagles was Oxana Senyuk, who played the entire game minus just 1:56, with 12 points. Behind her, the only other Eagle to hit double digit scoring was Mel Poce with 10.
In the second game of the double header, the crowd continued to give the wind the Eagles needed beneath their wings, but in the men’s case, it fell just short.
In another thrilling, high-intensity matchup, the Eagles lost to the Royals by a final score of 97-92, as they fell to 1-16 on the season.
The Eagles, who are notoriously slow starters in the first half of the game, collapsed in the fourth quarter when the Royals, who moved to 8-9 with the win, outscored them 32-18.
Up until the fourth and final frame, the game was an absolute edge-of-the-seat contest that saw 12 lead changes and nine number of ties all together.
For the Eagles, it was Dylan Kular who led the way offensively with 17 points and exploded with five three-point shots.
Behind Kular, five other Eagle players had scoring totals in the double digits, including Ali Bosir and Harpreet Randhawa who each followed with 16 of their own.
