Fourth-quarter flurry

The OUA championship has been staring Tasia McKenna in the face all season long – literally.

Lakehead’s star guard wrote the words on a board in the Thunderwolves dressing room before the season began. On Wednesday night she moved one step closer, dropping 26 points on a suspecting, but somewhat helpless Wilfred Laurier Golden Hawks squad, leading the Wolves to a 70-64 OUA West quarterfinal win at the Thunderdome.

McKenna’s offence, combined with a smothering defence that came to life in the fourth quarter, holding Laurier scoreless for the final eight minutes of the game, proved to be too much for the Hawks, despite amassing a 10-point lead in the third quarter.

The win, McKenna’s first playoff victory in four seasons, sets a Saturday date in London against the Western Mustangs, a team Lakehead split with at home this past weekend.

“It feels great to have won at home. To play here was fantastic, but to come up with the win was just icing on the cake. I know coach is pretty excited. He came into the locker room and said that for everyone in the locker room , it was the first time we’d won at home (in the playoffs), said McKenna, who had three boards, five assists and three steals to add to her impressive point total.

Her coach, Jon Kreiner, got his first playoff win in seven seasons at the reins, and is already starting to readjust his goals for the campaign.

“Last year we wanted to win a playoff game to get that experience. Our long-term goal was to make it to the OUA final. So we have to kind of have to fast-track that now. We got our first playoff win, and now we have to take care of the second part of that goal and get us to the OUA championship game and give us a chance to win it,” Kreiner said.

They almost didn’t get that chance, falling flat in the third quarter and letting the Hawks and guard Mallory Kohlmeier seemingly score at will.

But McKenna said no matter how far behind they trailed, their focus always remained on the victory they knew laid ahead.

“It just came down to believing in ourselves. We’ve seen what we can do. We had a couple of huddles out there on the floor and it just came down to the fact we had to lock down on defence, we had to play together because we were falling apart.”

Kreiner turned to McKenna to pull his troops together, counting on his floor general to calm nerves and concentrate on the task at hand.

Suddenly the shots that ricocheted off the rim in the third started dropping through the net, and slowly, but surely, Lakehead’s confidence returned.

That’s when mistakes started happening on the Laurier side of the ball.

LU’s comeback started in earnest early in the fourth. Trailing 62-54, forward Lindsay Druery scored two of her dozen points on the night to pull the Wolves to within six. After Laurier’s Alena Luciani missed a three-pointer the next time down the court, McKenna hit one from just inside the arc and the lead had suddenly dropped to four.

After trading turnovers, LU guard Lisa Styles intercepted a pass, knocking it away and into the hands of McKenna, who proceeded down the court, fired off a trey attempt, but was fouled on the play. She stepped to the line, hit two-of-three  and it was now 64-62.

McKenna then missed an easy lay-up that would have tied the game, but the Wolves got the ball back and Chiaki Nakamura tied the game with a pair of free throws 4:34 into the final stanza.

Not long afterward, defending OUA defensive player of the year Renata Adamczyk of the Hawks turned the ball over, leading to an easy hoop by Emily Ross, and the Wolves had their first lead since mid-way through the third, when Christa Mancino’s lay-up gave Laurier a 43-42 advantage.

Up four, the Wolves were called for a shot-clock violation, which appeared to give Laurier a little life as the final minute ticked away, but instead they made the exact same error and Mckenna ran around the court daring the opposition to foul her.

Eventually they did, and with 13.7 seconds to go, she nailed two free throws to put the game out of reach.