THUNDER BAY – If it was an opening night on Broadway, the Lakehead Thunderwolves season-opener would not get many favourable reviews in the trade papers.
The good: Tiffany Reynolds put up a team-high 16 points, hauled in eight rebounds and dished out five assists.
The bad: Lakehead dug itself an early 14-1 hole, trailed by 21 at the half, scoring exactly half the 42 points the Guelph Gryphons put up in the opening 20 minutes at the C.J. Sanders Fieldhouse.
The ugly: The Thunderwolves were out-rebounded 47-32, shot just 27 per cent from the field and turned the ball over 28 times, and went on to lose their 2022-23 debut 73-42.
It was an unfortunate start, said Reynolds, entering her fifth and final season with the Thunderwolves, a veteran guard on an inexperienced team whose growing pains showed on Friday night.
“Honestly, we had really good looks at the start and missed the little bunnies, which is the game,” Reynolds said.
“You can’t predict it and I think that kind of got us down a little bit. That’s a learning curve for us. Our team is pretty young so when you make the mistakes you have to say you’re going to focus on the next thing, not rethinking that thing because that’s what’s going to make the (rest) of the game fall behind.”
Guelph’s Mackeely Shantz did much of the early damage, opening the scoring with a three and putting up seven points in a 9-0 run to start the game.
It took the Thunderwolves (0-1) 6:15 seconds to hit their first basket from the field, August Ricketts firing up a hoop to cut the Gryphons lead to 14-5 at the time, LU having hit three of four free throws to that point.
Interim coach Dave McCallum said it was not the start they’d planned.
“Defensively we came out not necessarily as focused as we’d wanted to be, as physical as we wanted to be, and I think it really hurt us because we thought we had a lot of really good looks early and they just didn’t fall,” McCallum said.
“Offensively we were getting the shots we wanted, but we were very cold early and that really threw us off.”
Lakehead trailed by 16 after one, and after Reynolds keyed a 7-2 run, an 10-run, capped by a Maggie McGuire bucket, upped the Guelph lead to 21, an advantage they’d carry into halftime, doubling up the Thunderewolves 42-21 after 20 minutes.
The Gryphons scored nine straight points to open the third, and accounted for 16 of the first 18 points scored after the break, leading by as many as 34 before taking the pedal off the metal late in the quarter. Lakehead never pulled to within 26 the rest of the way.
“One of the goals coming into tonight was to take care of the basketball and make good decisions. We had too many turnovers early. Our defence did good things at times, but we have to be better and we have to be a little more consistent defensively so we can keep ourselves in games,” McCallum said.
Shantz led all scorers with 21 points and completed the double-double with 13 rebounds, Julia Colavecchia was the only other Gryphons player to hit double digits, finishing with 10.
Lily Gruber-Schulz had nine points and six boards for Lakehead, while Ricketts finished with six points and five rebounds.
Lakehead hosts Waterloo at 6 p.m. on Saturday night at the Fieldhouse.
