Wolves embarrass Voyageurs

They were an hour late getting out of the gate, but the Lakehead Thunderwolves didn’t skip a beat on Saturday night.

The visiting Laurentian Voyageurs paid the price.

After spending most of the day combating flight delays just to get to Thunder Bay, the Voyageurs probably wished their plane never got off the ground in Toronto. The Vees only scored 18 points in the first half and went down to a resounding 73-46 road loss in OUA women’s basketball play at the Thunderdome.

The offensive explosion was nice, but it was their play on the defensive side of the ball that had fifth-year guard Tasia McKenna smiling in the aftermath of the one-sided affair.

“We talked a lot about our match-up zone defence playing with our big players, Lacey (McNulty), Lindsay (Druery) and Sarah (Gordon). We really wanted to take care of the inside game, which I thought we did on defence and then forced them to take the outside shot,” said McKenna, who wound up with nine points and four assists on the evening.

“I thought we were really physical. We knew coming into this game it was going to be a tough battle, as we are rivals. I just thought that overall it was a really great team win.”

Unlike Friday night’s 14-point win over York, the Wolves spread out their scoring. While McNulty, McKenna and Druery combined for 35 points, the Wolves got help from all over, including six points from Thunder Bay’s Katie Ulakovic and five from rookie Darcy Zinck out of Halifax.

Zinck, who gave coach Jon Kreiner a healthy 16 minutes, was unanimously voted the team’s player of the game, a vote conducted behind closed doors in the Wolves dressing room.

“She shot the ball well. She was only 2-for-3, but that’s enough. She had four assists and only one turnover. That’s a great game coming from a rookie player and it was really great to see,” said McKenna, barely hiding her Nova Scotia bias.

Zinck, a Citadel High School graduate, said it wasn’t her talent, but the team’s system, that brought out the best in her game.

“We have a really easy system to play in. We have two really strong post players, it’s really easy to play with Tasia. My role on the team, a lot of the time, I’m just looking for the post and just trying to get the ball inside because that’s where our strength is,” Zinck said.

Following a game that the Wolves allowed about a dozen more points than Kreiner would have liked, Zinck said there was little to criticize about Saturday’s performance.

“We did a really good job at executing what coach wanted us to do. We just played our game and stuck to what we wanted to run and really worked on our defence and came out with a good result,” said Zinck, whose team has now won three in a row.

The closest the Voyageurs got in this one was 4-3, after Krysten Patrick sank a three-pointer three minutes into the game.

The Wolves went on an 11-0 run after that and were up 19-9 after one.

They repeated their streak to start the second quarter, with Laurentian finally hitting a basket 4:35 into the period.

Lakehead led 41-18 at the half and 51-28 after three.

McNulty, who had a game-high 13 –tied with Druery – put up a quick five points in the fourth and Lakehead never looked back.

The Wolves, who trail undefeated Laurier and Western in the OUA West standings, host RMC and Queen’s next weekend.

Claw marks: McNulty is ninth in the OUA with 8.25 rebounds a night. Zinck is fourth with 3.75 assists a game, while McKenna is sixth with a 3.67 average ... Laurentian was missing its best player, Katie Goggins, who sat because of an injury. Goggins averages 10.5 points a night.