RSEQ Week #3

Saturday vs. McGill

BU          26      17      19      11   -   73
MU         15      26      20      20   -   81


It was an exciting day on campus. We were inducting former BU basketball stars Trevor Bennett & Cynthia Johnston, along with all time great athletic therapist, Steve King, into the BU-RBC Wall of Distinction. It was great to see so many alumni and friends of Gaiter basketball back to honour these 3 exceptional people. Along with that our women's team broke a multi year RSEQ game losing streak beating a very good McGill team by 22. I am very happy for the coaches & players, they deserved wins earlier in league, but had suffered the same fate as us.

Dave Belanger

Having very similar results as the women's team with some very close losses I was hopeful we would continue to follow the same path as them for at least one more day! McGill had their full complement of players this week and spanked Concordia by 40 on Thursday night. So, we knew this would be a tough game. It looked good early as we started well and played pretty good basketball for the better part of the game. It would have been an entertaining game to watch from the stands and both teams were playing at a  high level.

We managed to hold onto a 2 point half time lead after a shaky 2nd quarter which included missing an open layup at point blank range with 5 seconds to go that McGill rebounded and turned into a running 1 footed take off 3 point hoop from 30 feet out at the buzzer. One play never decides a game, but that was key and one of a handful of possessions that hurt us. Despite that I thought we executed well, played hard and competed every possession.

The game had 14 lead changes and after half time no one really had more than a 4 point lead until the

last 90 seconds of the game. With about 5 minutes to go it looked like McGill had a chance to put us away then, but we put together a couple of defensive stops and scored 5 straight points to take a one point lead. Unfortunately we struggled to score in the final 3 minutes...part of it was McGill's defense and part of it was us just missing good shots.  A couple of empty offensive possessions and a couple of possessions where McGill made big shots decided what was a closely played game. We have talked a lot about the importance of one possession with our guys. It is likely our season is not decided by a game, but by a possession. Top to bottom there is no league as competitive as ours.

So, that leaves us with a league record of 0-4 where we have lost 4 games in the final minutes or seconds. Getting that first victory will do a lot and when that happens we will be difficult to deal with. Dave led us in scoring with 16 points. Jona had 13 points and 5 assists while Nick chipped in 11 points. Abdul had a season high 5 assists.

We do not have a Christmas tournament again this year and will resume league play in January. Until then, I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!
Rod