Women V-Reds let one get away

Rookie Claire Colborne's first impression of live, honest to goodness regular season Atlantic University Sport Women's Basketball Conference basketball?

"I love it."

Jeff Speedy's? Not so much.

Certainly the initial impression was a good one: an 80-65 victory over the Memorial Sea-Hawks Saturday in which Colborne, the highy-touted rookie out of Calgary, collected 25 points and six rebounds and dished for seven assists, all team highs for the evening.

Fast forward a few hours though - and it was literally just that, since the teams tipped off at 11 a.m. Sunday morning, when a lot of folks were still in church - and, though Colborne was good again (29 points, five rebounds in 26 minutes of floor time), the V-Reds frittered away at 15-point lead and fell 77-71 to the Sea-Hawks.

"We didn't guard in the fourth quarter," said Speedy, dissecting how they surrendered 30 points in the final 10 minutes to turn victory into defeat this day. "They were very physical and killed us on the boards in the third quarter, and then in the fourth quarter, we just stopped guarding. They beat us off the dribble at will, they had wide open threes,,,and if you give good shooters enough wide open threes, they're going to make enough of them to hurt you."

Kill you, in fact.

V-Reds looked like they might run the Sea-Hawks off the floor in the early going. Early wakeup call or not, they came out flying, playing track meet basketball and breaking out to an 8-0 lead and a comfortable 20-11 advantage after the first quarter. By midway through the second, it was 32-17, and there seemed little cause for worry.

But the Newfoundlanders took off on a bit of a run, closing it back to within five points by the time Grace Fishbein hit a three-pointer with 2:41 left in the half, and to within four when she knocked down a field goal at the buzzer.

Sea-Hawks tied it by the time the half was two-and-a-half minutes old, and took the lead midway through the quarter when Brittany Dalton knocked down a field goal to give them a 45-43 edge.

Samantha Kavanagh knocked down another and the Sea-Hawks led by four. V-Reds regained the lead with a run of their own over the final three minutes of the quarter to lead 51-47 coming home.

But they couldn't hang on. Memorial player of the game Brittany Dalton scored eight of her team high 22 points in the final eight minutes and Fishbein, who finished with 20 points on the morning, including four of six three-pointers, dropped one dagger with 3:08 left to break a 61-61 tie and another with 45.8 seconds left to boost the advantage to five points. In between, there was one by Kim Devison with 1:05 left to stall a V-Reds comeback try.

In the end, the margin was six, the weekend was split, and Speedy was not happy.

"Definitely not happy with the split," he said. "It's really hard to win on the road in this league. We had a 15-point lead in the second quarter and let down and let them back in it, and refused to work hard enough in the fourth quarter. Every game in this league is going to be insanely close and insanely important. The teams that can get it done in the fourth quarter are going to eke out some wins that maybe they shouldn't, and that was MUN today."

"We didn't play our game," said Colborne. "The second quarter was where it kind of started. We just have to learn from that. We didn't adjust to their style, we didn't stay composed and play our game."

Colborne's opening weekend though, confirmed it: she's going to be a good one in this league. She is now. She was named UNB's player of the game in both contests.

"My team is really awesome," she said. (Saturday's game) was really awesome. We pushed the ball and everything and played really well as a team. Today, not so much. We just didn't get out on their shooters. We need to go after them at the three point line. If we came out and played the way we did last night, we probably should have won that game."

In addition to Colborne's 29 points for the V-Reds, captain Amanda Sharpe had 19 points and 10 rebounds. Emma Russell added eight points.

In the Saturday victory, Colborne's 25 points were supplemented by 12 from Sharpe and 10 from Leah Corby. Fishbein had 16 to lead Memorial, with Kelia Pond collecting 13, Alexandria Forsey adding a dozen and Dalton putting up 11.