Lindsay Druery had three points at the half. Her twin tower partner Lacey McNulty had none.
When 20 minutes were all said and done, Lakehead (7-7) trailed McMaster (7-7), a team two wins behind them in the standings when the weekend began, by 20 points, down 36-16. It really didn't get much better in the second half.
The Marauders, buoyed by an easy win on Friday, forced the Wolves to the perimeter, which proved to be a no-woman's land for a frosty Lakehead shooting corps that hit just six of 36 shots in the opening 20 minutes at the Thunderdome and ultimately fell 73-44.
"I don't think that we've been working as hard as we've been working. I think that we've accepted the fact a little bit there that we'd won a few games in a row and we've been playing well," said LU coach Jon Kreiner, a tad dismayed at the performance, or lack-thereof from his troops.
"We basically made a lot of bad decisions. We'll make a great defensive play and turn it right back over, leading to a high percentage shot for the other team. The decision-making this weekend wasn't very good."
Oh yeah, there's also the little mater of the 29 turnovers the Wolves committed, handing the ball back to the Marauders and watching the points pile up against them as a result.
It was sloppy basketball, Kreiner said of his team, clad in pink on this night to raise awareness for breast cancer.
"Our best players weren't our best players," Kreiner said. Carolyn Fragale and Lindsay, I think they worked hard, but they struggled this weekend."
The Marauders managed to do what most team who play the Thunderwolves try to do, shut them down from the inside out.
Mission accomplished.
Druery finished the game with an uncharacteristicly low nine points to lead LU, and McNulty could only manage a measly one point, the free throw coming late in the contest when the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
"I think Mac succeeded. We did a lot of different things to get the ball inside. We went back to some of the things we were supposed to do earlier in the second half. We put the ball inside. But the (other) team will put a little bit extra pressure on us and we'll stop and we won't carry on," Kreiner said. "Then we'll move the ball to another spot on the floor and we kind of just forget what we're trying to do. Teams are just going to try to take us out of our strength and we've got to continue to battle back and fight and then go to our strength."
Needless to say the weekend sweep does nothing for Lakehead's playoff hopes. The Wolves fell into a fourth-place tie with the Marauders, and are just one game up on Western and Guelph. Only six teams make the postseason.
"It's real disappointing. I mean, Mac is a team that's obviously a good team and has beaten some great teams and have a lot of injuries. But that's neither here nor there," Kreiner said. "We had an opportunity this weekend to put ourselves in a nice position and we weren't able to do that."
Taylor Chiarot led McMaster with a game-high 23.
