THUNDER BAY – Give it away, give it away, give it away now.
It's a pretty good summary of the Lakehead Thunderwolves women's basketball team's night on Friday, a slew of turnovers plaguing their return to OUA play, resulting in a disappointing 62-55 loss to the visiting Guelph Gryphons at a capacity limited CJ Sanders Fieldhouse.
The T-Wolves committed more than two dozen turnovers, including 14 in the first half giving the Gryphons, losers of three straight heading into the contest, too many extra chances.
Leading by four at the half, Guelph went on a 16-2 run to start the third and withstood a late charge by the hometown Thunderwolves, who pulled to within three after trailing by 18, to secure the victory, improving to 4-3.
It was the first game for either team since Nov. 27, a span of 76 days.
It showed, said LU coach Jon Kreiner.
“There was only a six-shot difference, but we gave up 27 turnovers, far too many. Our goal is 15. We talked about every sport – puck control, ball control, whatever,” Kreiner said. “We've got to be stronger with the basketball. Tomorrow we've got to come out. They're missing players, they're hurt, they're banged up. They have three starters out.”
Despite the outcome, the big positive for the Wolves is that without the turnovers, there's a good chance they would have won the contest.
Finding themselves down 18 in the third, they battled back to close the gap to three in the fourth, but the clock wasn't in their favour and a missed chances led to Gryphons baskets down the stretch, putting the game out of reach in the final minute.
The key, with all-star guard Sofia Lluch out for the time being for personal reasons, is not putting all the expectations on the shoulders of senior guard Tiffany Reynolds.
If that’s not happening, it’s a lot to ask.
“Now she has to be point guard, she has to be the scorer and she has to guard the best player on the other team,” Kreiner said. “She has to do it all. We’re working on that. We’re trying to distribute the roles a little more evenly and equally.
“When we put Tiffany in position some really good thing happened and we were able to pick the pace up a little bit. But we weren’t able to run a lot of half-court offence against their zone.”
Reynolds hit a buzzer-beater three-pointer at the end of the first to give Lakehead its only lead of the night, an 18-17 advantage.
But the Gryphons struck back to start the second, going on a 12-3 run and led 33-29 at halftime. They extended their lead to 18 with a 14-0 run early in the third and led 14 after 30 minutes.
Eva Guilera, who strugged in the first half, found her touch in the fourth, scoring back-to-back buckets that keyed an 11-0 Thunderwolves run, punctuated by a Reynolds trey that cut the gap to 54-41. Guilera, who finished with 10, tying her with Ally Burke and Reynolds for tops on the team, hit another bucket in the final two minutes to close it to four again, but Renee Armstrong fired up a three that stretched the lead to seven and put the game away for good.
Kaylah Lewis, who had eight points for Lakehead, all in the first half, said it was exciting to play in front of her parents and coming off a knee injury, it was just too bad they couldn’t take better care of the ball.
“I think tomorrow night for sure all our mistakes that beat us up, if we can limit our turnovers then we’re golden.”
Guelph was missing a number of key starters to injury and illness.
Tip-off on Saturday is 6 p.m. All tickets have been sold.
