THUNDER BAY – After one quarter, the Lakehead Thunderwolves found themselves in a 14-point hole on Saturday night.
They battled back to take the lead before halftime, but couldn’t sustain the momentum following the break and dropped their third straight decision, falling 79-64 to the visiting Brock Badgers, the No. 5-ranked team in the nation.
“We just have to focus on being disciplined and playing good, high-level basketball for 40 minutes, instead of just little stretches,” said third-year-guard Alston Harris, who wound up with 14 points in the game, second only to teammate Michael Okafor’s 17 on the Lakehead scoring chart.
“We felt like we could have gotten both these games, if not at least one. So yeah, we’ve just got to raise our level of intensity.”
Coach Ryan Thomson also talked to his troops about shot selection.
Lakehead fired up 69 shots in the game, but only managed to hit 24 of them, including just five of 26 from beyond the arch.
Harris said that’s something they’ll work on this week before the 1-3 Thunderwolves venture south to take on the Laurier Golden Hawks next weekend.
“It starts in practice. We’re going to work on getting better shots and knowing where our shots are coming from. We’ll get it together,” Harris said.
It’s a big thing, Thomson said.
“Just understanding kind of when and where we’re trying to get our shots from. In transition, I think we missed the weak side a fair bit tonight. Some of our shooters that are out there to basically catch and shoot and make shots aren’t getting the level of uncontested shot that they should, so we end up taking more difficult ones later in the shot clock,” Thomson said.
The Badgers could do no wrong in the opening quarter, hitting 12 of 20 shots to take a 27-13 lead after 10 minutes.
It was the mirror opposite in the second quarter, Lakehead charging back from 16 points down to take a one-point lead at the half. Eric Gonzalez helped key the comeback, hitting a pair of big treys before Harris took over scoring seven quick points.
Okafor punctuated the rally with a thunderous two-handed dunk, but LU couldn’t keep it going in the third.
Brock took the lead four different times in the period, jumping in front for good on a Daniel Cayer put-back, the Badgers controlling the glass all night long, out-rebounding Lakehead 48-34.
Thunderwolves guard Laoui Msambya cut the Brock lead to seven early in the fourth, a steal leading to a basket, but Cayer, who scored a game-high 19, completed a three-point play at the foul line and made another bucket in quick succession to stretch the Badgers lead to 11.
