Vees vanquished, Wolves down Laurentian 87-50

The only question the Lakehead Thunderwolves needed answered Saturday night was whether or not they could stretch their lead to 40 points and keep it there.

They managed to put as many as 43 points between themselves and the visiting Laurentian Voyageurs, but in the end, going deep into their bench, they could only eke out an 87-50 win.

“Over the 40 minutes tonight we had an easier time of things. But it was a tough day for Laurentian. They had a 20-point comeback win last night. Then they sat in the airport today for four hours,” said Lakehead’s men’s basketball coach Scott Morrison, whose team improved to 3-1 with its third straight triumph.

“So it wasn’t all us. We got lucky with them maybe having a lack of legs coming in. It wasn’t easy if you consider the four days of practice we put in to get here. But we’ll take an easier night for sure. There are a lot of tough ones coming up.”

Both Laurentian’s men’s and women’s team had a horrendous day of travel, stuck in Porter Airlines's downtown Toronto terminal for much of the day, forcing the Thunderwolves to push back both games by an hour as their plane didn’t land in Thunder Bay until 4:30 p.m.

That made easy pickings for the likes of LU forward Yoosrie Salhia, who put up his first double-double of the young OUA season, snagging 13 rebounds to go with 11 points.

Salhia, a third-year guard from Toronto, had minor knee surgery in the pre-season, and said he felt right for the first time since going under the knife.

“It felt good to get back into my rebounding habits today. It was mostly conditioning. I’ve got to get better conditioned. But our team played great today, everyone played strong,” Salhia said.

Superhuman might be a better term to describe it.

After spotting the Vees a 4-0 lead, Lakehead took the lead for good when first-year guard Venzal Russell drained a three, a play kept alive by strong play on the offensive glass, setting the stage for the Wolves aerial attack the rest of the night.

Joseph Jones hit a three that put the Wolves up 20-13, the start of a 9-0 run that culminated with a Ben Johnson three-pointer and Lakehead owed a 26-16 lead after 10.

They didn’t slow down in the second, going on a 12-2 run to open the quarter. After Chavaan Sheldon scored a pair, Lakehead put up five more, including a no-look, behind-the-neck pass from Russell to Salhia parked under the Laurentian net, a play that had Magic Johnson’s name written all over it.

“He can create off the dribble and he’s a great passer, he can find us when we’re open,” Salhia said of his teammate, a junior college transfer from Michigan.

It was more of the same in the second half, which the Wolves entered with a 23-point advantage. Laurentian outscored Lakehead 4-2 in the opening couple of minutes, but then the Wolves began to pour it on again, embarking on an epic 19-0 run that shattered the Voyageurs dreams of a second-straight miraculous comeback.

Russell, who had a game-high 15 on the night, scored five points during the stretch, while Salhia, Jamie Searle and Andrew Hackner all contributed long-distance threes that pushed Lakehead’s lead to 68-30 after 30 minutes.

“We got a little cold in the second half, but maybe on another night or another year we would have let up on defence and let them back in the game when we went cold. But we got the stops tonight and had a good third quarter of defence, and every minute that ticked by, their legs got a little tougher, when they saw the score mounting," Morrison said.

“It’s just a matter of knocking a couple of shots when we got tight, then we got rolling again and put the game away.”

Lakehead, which hosts RMC and Queen’s next weekend, are in a three-way tie for second in the OUA West Division.