Lindsay Druery and Lacey McNulty teamed up one final time for the Lakehead Thunderwolves on Saturday night, needing a perfect storm to brew in order to squeak into the OUA playoffs.
Druery, who graduates after five seasons, poured in 24 points and grabbed a dozen rebounds in a game coach Jon Kreiner called her best in a Thunderwolves uniform.
McNulty, the Wolves other twin tower, made a valiant effort on one leg, her right knee torn up and in need of medical attention. The Belleville native only scored one basket, a first-quarter three-pointer that put the Wolves up by four at the time, and struggled mightily playing through pain.
Lakehead won the game, and in convincing fashion, 82-68, but fell seven points short of erasing the 20-point lead the Guelph Gryphons garnered 24 hours earlier, and lost out on the sixth and final OUA West playoff spot.
It meant the end of the line for Druery and McNulty, neither of whom was ready to let go.
"It's definitely hard and I'm going to miss the girls and just the Thunderdome in general and the fans and everything," said McNulty, who is hanging up her runners, too battered and bruised to continue in a sport that first took her to the NCAA before landing her in Thunder Bay.
It was Druery who started the Wolves on the path to a double-digit lead, draining a pair of baskets to stretch the lead to six. Lakehead scored the last nine points of the night, just not enough to save their season.
"I'm real proud of our girls," Kreiner said. "This is the toughest game to win, when you know you've got to win by 21 to make the playoffs and it's senior night ... If the fourth quarter of this game is the final chapter, the obviously it's a good way to end the season.
"They've done a lot for me the past two years and ... stood by me when I hurt my Achilles and when I hurt my knee. I just wanted to make sure I went out there in my last game and did what I could."
Teammates, well aware of the impending end to the duo's reign under the net, stencilled the numbers 23 and 31 on the calves in honour of Druery and McNulty, the latter of whom sat out Friday's loss, knowing she only had one game left in her body.
Druery was emotional after the game, which saw the Thunderwolves up their record to 10-12.
"I'm not going to lie, I'm holding back a lot of tears," she said. "It was pretty emotional, but I couldn't be any more proud of our team by the performance we had tonight and by our season. It's been a total learning experience and I wouldn't change any of it."
The Smithville, Ont. native said in the end, the weekend set was essentially an 80-minute game, and a brief fourth-quarter lapse on Friday, one that saw the Gryphons take a two-point cushion and turn it into a 20-point margin of victory, proved too costly.
"Unfortunately we had a little lapse last night, for about the last seven minutes of the game, and it comes down to that. It was, like I said, a learning experience and I think all the girls recognize that and next time when it comes down to it, when it's an 80-minute game, they'll play a full 80 minutes," said Druery, who also hit her first and only OUA three-pointer in the first quarter, which gave the Wolves a 9-5 lead at the time.
The escaped the first quarter up by three, and stretched their first-half lead to nine in the early moments of the second, Ayse Kalkan scoring back-to-back hoops to push the LU lead to 26-17 and make the crowd believe anything was possible.
But just as quickly the Gryphons, as they did all night until it was too late, came storming back.
Ali Dzikowski dropped a three-pointer for Guelph to start the comeback, and by the end of the half they trailed 35-32, meaning LU had to win the second half by 18 or more or forget about any more basketball this season.
Every time Lakehead looked like it might be starting to pull away, the Gryphons had an answer, never trailing by more than five until late in the fourth.
The Wolves managed to score the final nine points of the game, but it wasn't enough to salvage their season.
Kreiner said if that's the final chapter on this era of his team, it was a good one.
"It's the little things, like Lacey being able to step in and play tonight ... There was no way I was keeping her out. It just says a lot about the character of these kids and how much they really want to play. It would have been real easy for her to say it didn't make any sense, but she wanted to be there for her teammates."
Druery, whose 37 points this weekend was enough to move her into sixth place on the LU scoring list with 1,611 points, passing Donna Freeman, will be equally hard to replace, Kreiner said.
"Obviously she means a lot and the culture of what we do from a basketball standpoint is changing to another chapter, so we're really going to miss Dru a lot. It's more the stuff off the court that I'll be talking about."
