Sharpe-Colborne combo too much for opponents

The Varsity Reds women’s basketball team was Sharpe in their final weekend of play before the Christmas break.

Coming into this 0-3-1, having suffered only one loss they were looking to keep their win streak going after sweeping UPEI.

After crushing Dalhousie on Friday 97-49 the Varsity Reds were in for a tougher test Saturday night as they played host to Acadia.

On Saturday Amanda Sharpe opened the scoring followed by a quick second UNB basket to open up an early lead with the Varsity Reds going on an early 11-0 run. In recent games the UNB defense had been questioned as of late, but it did not matter as their offence dominated Acadia early winning the first quarter 34-19.

In the second quarter UNB slowly continue to build on their lead from the first quarter with a team effort spreading out the scoring to take a 56-36 into halftime.

Acadia inched their way closer to UNB in the third quarter, taking advantage of some defensive mistakes by the Varsity Reds, but the V-Reds continued to have a strong showing with Samantha Kaminsky and Virginia Peters both having strong play off the bench. The Varsity Reds came out of the quarter with a 75-62 lead, significantly closer going into the fourth quarter than their match the night before.

The fourth and final quarter became another intense finish for the Varsity Reds at home as 4:47 into the quarter Acadia had closed to within seven of UNB.

Although Acadia closed in on UNB’s lead, head coach Jeff Speedy was not worried.

“I’m kind of glad to be honest they did,” he said. “Two weeks ago against Newfoundland we had a 15 point lead and they came back and won. Then last weekend in PEI we had a 25 point lead and they came back and we ended up winning by eight.”

That was as close as they would get as the Varsity Reds went on to their fourth straight win, dropping Acadia 93-77.

The players of the game were Megan Corby game for UNB and Emma Duinker for Acadia.

In their earlier action on the weekend the Varsity Reds played host to the Dalhousie Tigers, who had managed only one win going into the weekend.

UNB was hot early taking a 37-7 lead after the first quarter, with the remainder of the game being closer, but ultimately UNB commanded the play and did not look back after their early lead.

“We’ve got some kids that can shoot the ball, it’s in our gym and we shoot here everyday,” said Speedy. “I think we’re just comfortable (referring to early scoring) here and we’ve got some talent offensively.”

Fifth year UNB player Amanda Sharpe was named the player of the game, while Patricia McNeil received the honours for Dalhousie.

Sharpe also led the team in points with 29, as well as leading the team in rebounds with 11.

Rookie Claire Colborne kept up her strong offensive play as well, scoring 22 points with four boards.

Going into the weekend Speedy mentioned defense being an issue, but was pleased to see his team pick up their play in their own end of the court.

“We played really well this weekend. We played two really good days in a row and this is a very high scoring team so they got 77, but I don’t think we made too many breakdowns on defense,” said Speedy. “If anything in the fourth quarter we didn’t box out very well, but the defense was ok.”

Part of this has been the Varsity Reds really pressuring the other team to make plays with the ball.

“We’ve been working on it all year, we’re just getting better at it,” said Speedy. “We’re really trying to pressure the ball and play a little bit up tempo. We didn’t get a ton of steals off it tonight, but it got the game going and the tempo we wanted.”

The Varsity Reds women’s basketball team will now enjoy a break until the weekend of January 8-9 when they travel to Memorial for a doubleheader.

Speedy knows the two four point wins this weekend are huge going into the break.

“It’s huge. Not only did we hold the fort at home, but they were four point games,” he said. “We’ve already won more four point games this year than we did last year, I think we only won one. It’s huge for that reason. You got to win at home and you really got to win those four pointers.”