LU’s women’s basketball team to face top-ranked offence

If the Lakehead Thunderwolves women’s basketball team ever wanted to make a name for itself, this is the weekend to do it.

The Wolves (10-4) face their toughest test of the season on Friday and Saturday night, when the No. 2 ranked Windsor Lancers (11-2) and OUA top scorer Jessica Clemencon hit the Thunderdome floor with a division title on their minds.

The Lancers, who trail Western by half a game in the OUA West, bring the top ranked offense to Thunder Bay, averaging a league-high 78.1 points a game. And their defence is rather stingy too, fifth-best in the OUA at 54 points allowed a night.

That doesn’t leave much room for error, said fifth-year forward Sarah Gordon, adding it’s a good chance for the15th-ranked Wolves to define themselves as true contenders as the playoffs near.

“We’re actually really kind of happy that we’re playing at home, obviously, because it’s a good atmosphere here, but also because we’re coming in as the underdogs,” said Gordon, averaging seven points and 5.4 rebounds a contest.

“It’s always nice to have that expectation that the other team is walking in here thinking they’re going to pull two games out of this. We seem to do better when we go into games not really being expected to win.”

At least one person has those expectations.

Coach Jon Kreiner says it’s his job to find the limited weaknesses on the Lancer roster and exploit them at every opportunity.

It’s not an easy task, he acknowledged, but they are there and, as he pointed out, it’s not like they’re coming into the weekend set undefeated. Windsor can be beaten, Kreiner said, and that’s the attitude his players have to take.

“When we look at Windsor, they’re a big, tall, strong team. I think that they struggle a little bit handling the ball,” he said. “There are some weaknesses of some of the players we might be able to exploit. But there aren’t many. They can shoot the ball really well … and they rebound the ball tremendously, so we know we’re going to have to mix it up defensively and get they out of their offensive rhythm.

“They’re not a real quick team, so we’re going to try to exploit them in the transition game.”

Of course the Wolves have a few weapons of their own, namely OUA athlete of the week Tasia McKenna.

The Nova Scotia native is coming off perhaps the best game of her career on Friday, scoring 20 of the Wolves 22 fourth-quarter points, part of a 35-point effort, to lead Lakehead to its first of two road wins over McMaster.

“She really took it into her hands to win that game for us,” Gordon said. “It’s not that we were playing badly, we just weren’t hitting shots. She was hitting shots and I think everyone understood that and made sure she got the ball.”

Gordon said if McKenna is hot again, it will help on the scoreboard, and if Windsor pays too much attention it could free up some of the other LU shooters, like herself, Darcy ZInck or Ayse Kalkan.

Either way it’s a good sign, Gordon said.

“Absolutely,” she said.

Game time for the women is 6 p.m. both nights. The men, in a first-place battle with Windsor, will tip-off at 8 p.m.