THUNDER BAY – A night after giving the No. 1 Carleton Ravens as good a go as any other team in the OUA has this season, the Lakehead Thunderwolves ran out of gas taking on the No. 9 Ottawa Gee-Gees.
The visitors pulled out all the stops on Saturday night, finishing with their second-highest point total this season in downing the out-matched Wolves 94-59 at the C.J. Sanders Fieldhouse.
It was rough, admitted six-foot guard Darnell Curtin, who led Lakehead with 11 points, the lone Thunderwolves player to cross the 10-point threshold.
The Gee-Gees (6-2) put together runs of 14 and 15 points on separate occasions and hit 56 per cent of the 72 shots they fired up, including 12 of 16 in the final frame.
It wasn’t as bad as it looked, it was just a matter of not executing, Curtin said.
“They’re containable. It was just the little mistakes we were making,” the third-year guard from Hamilton said. “Last night we faced Carleton and we gave it all we’ve got. Today I don’t think we came in with as much energy as we did last night.
“But I think we can compete with every single team in this league. We’ve just got to use every single tool we’ve got. We’ve got a lot of tools. We’ve got rebounders, we’ve got scorers and we’ve got playmakers. We’ve just got to kind of mesh it together.”
The loss dropped the winless Wolves to 0-8, with a road trip next weekend to face Toronto and Ryerson all that’s left on the first-half schedule.
It’s not ideal, but not disastrous, Curtin said of their record to date.
The last-place Thunderwolves are buried at the bottom of the OUA West standings, but are just four points out of a playoff berth.
“That’s how I’m looking at it. We can go 0-10 going into the new year, but as long as there are still games left, there’s still a chance,” Curtin said. “I know we’re good and we can compete, we’ve just got to piece it together.”
Senior guard Mor Menashe agreed.
“We still have 12 more games to go and that’s a lot,” the Israeli import said. “The teams in the West are not doing as well and for us, we’re not thinking about the end of the season yet. We’re just trying to focus on our mistakes, trying to focus on each possession, each game.
“Everything is open at this point. We’re still optimistic.”
Ottawa, whose bench got plenty of playing time, were led by 17 points from Calvin Epistola and 16 from Jean Pierre-Charles, who also grabbed 14 boards to complete the double-double.
They led 24-14 after one and grew the lead to 26 by halftime.
The Thunderwolves put together a 7-0 run in the third, a Nashon Hurst trey cutting the gap to 23 in a period that saw the two teams put up an identical 17 points.
The Wolves just didn’t have an answer for the Ottawa attack in the other three quarters, coach Manny Furtado said.
“They made some big shots. It was scramble plays late in shot clocks and their ability to hit the three just stole the momentum, sucked the life out of it, sucked the crowd out of it,” Furtado said. “A lot of that, to be honest, is a lack of execution on our end.”
Fifth-year forward Noel Jones put up nine points in four minutes in the fourth for Lakehead.
