THUNDER BAY – When the opposition bottles up Leashja Grant, the Lakehead Thunderwolves need other players to step up and fill the gap.
On Saturday night it was guards Tiffany Reynolds and Nikki Ylagan.
Grant, the OUA’s leading scorer and third in the nation, was held to four points at the half in a rematch against the Western Mustangs, a team she torched for 29 the night before, a 37-point triumph that helped the Thunderwolves end a three-game losing streak.
She’d finish with 14 and just missed a 13th straight double-double, falling a rebound shy of continuing the impressive streak.
No worries.
Reynolds dropped 16 points and was a defensive force all night long, while Ylagan hit five three-pointers and finished with 21 points to lead all scorers as Lakehead (14-4) won its second straight, 65-52 over the Mustangs (5-13).
Reynolds said she took advantage of the opportunities afforded her by the Mustangs (5-13), who relied a little too much on past performance when deciding who to guard.
“Sometimes I’m not the best shooter. Everybody knows this. It’s not that they took us out of our offense to Leashja, they were clogging the paint so much and we were just used to passing it to Leashja on the first pass, when all we needed to do was reverse the ball a few times, get the defence moving and she was wide open, like what happened in the fourth quarter,” said Reynolds, who calls Toronto home.
Ylagan, who has several big games under her belt already this season, said teams are going to focus on Grant and it’s up to others to make them think twice about the strategy.
“Coach just told us we just had to get after them defensively because good defence leads to good offence,” Ylagan said.
She added getting two wins against the Mustangs was a great way to hit the reset button, after their recent struggles.
“I think those three losses, the losing streak, really helped us push each other in practice, just because the feeling of losing, we don’t like it,” Ylagan said. “Coming back home got us into our mojo.”
Although Lakehead never trailed, and led 17-3 in the early stages of the first, the Mustangs refused to lay down and accept their fate. Trailing by 11 after one, the Mustangs chipped it down to eight by halftime and stayed close throughout the third.
Maddi Horst narrowed the gap to four early in the third, but rookie guard Sofia Lluch stole the ball and went coast-to-coast to push the LU lead back to six. Ylagan then buried a three and the Wolves led by nine after three. They started the fourth on a 14-0 run, Ylagan collecting eight.
The Wolves led by as many as 23 when Lakehead coach Jon Kreiner yanked his starters. The Mustangs finished the game on a 10-0 run, but ran out of time.
“It definitely feels good,” Reynolds said of the sweep. “Before the weekend we talked about getting our mojo back. We definitely got our mojo back and we’ve got to prepare for the tough games coming up.”
Kreiner said his team was prepared for a different Mustangs team on the second night.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be another 97-point offensive outburst. We wanted to see our defence clamp down tonight, and for the most part it was. We really, really struggled moving the basketball. We were out of sorts,” Kreiner said.
Beyond the arc: The Wolves wore pink in support of breast cancer research. The men's and women's teams combined to raise $9,653 ... Lakehead announced the signing of Colorado's Kaylah Lewis, the top-ranked senior guard in the state. She'll join the team next season.
