THUNDER BAY – Manny Furtado’s got some pretty big holes to fill.
Gone are all-star forward Bacarius Dinkins and star guards Henry Tan and Alex Robichaud, the heart and soul of last year’s Lakehead Thunderwolves men’s basketball team.
Despite the losses, Furtado got plenty of encouragement on Thursday night.
Australian forward Jack Bull stepped into the spotlight, asked to help fill the gap left by the departing players. Given a chance to shine, he showed he might be a weapon Furtado can count on, scoring 13 points and adding six rebounds to help the Wolves down the visiting Winnipeg Wesmen 90-83 in his team’s pre-season debut at the Thunderdome.
“I’ve got to give this kid Jack Bull a lot of credit. He’s come from Australia, he hasn’t been back here in three years and he’s got a lot on his mind right now,” Furtado said. “All he did was compete all night. Not only was he on the scoreboard and getting rebounds all night, but we could see him sealing and getting people lay-ups because of his hard work.
“It was amazing to see.”
Bull said he’s up to the challenge.
“Staying over the summer I put in a lot of work with our two assistant coaches and our head coach,” Bull said.
“We did a lot of work and I think for me, a lot of it is mindset. I felt like having to step up put the pressure on me and I was able to respond pretty well.”
From the outside it might look like the team is going to be in tough this season, trying to replace all-star talent at three slots.
And it won’t be easy, Bull said – but it can be done with the talent in the room.
“We’ve got a good group of guys. We’ve honestly been grinding hard this pre-season. Guys are going at it and it kind of showed today. We played pretty tough and luckily we got the win,” Bull said.
He wasn’t the only auditioning for playing time.
Quincy Johnson, who sat out last season, added 20 points, hitting five of 12 three-point attempts on the way to a 20-point outing in his return.
“Quincy definitely shot the ball well,” Furtado said. “We missed him last year. That’s huge for us. He can shoot the three and stretch the floor like that.”
Nick Burke led all scorers with 25, including eight in the decisive fourth quarter, which saw the two teams swap the lead eight times before LU went ahead for good on a Kache Kopec bucket, the start of a 10-0 run that put the game out of reach.
Lakehead led 22-19 after one and were up 35-23 in the second before the Wesmen went on a 20-5 run to end the half, taking a 43-40 lead after 20 minutes.
Billy Yaworsky had 18 points and 12 rebounds for Winnipeg.
The two teams tangle again on Friday night, part of Lakehead’s annual homecoming weekend. Tip-off is 8 p.m.
