Wolves hang on

It was sloppy, but a win’s a win.

With two minutes to play, Lakehead guard Ben Johnson finally made a three-pointer, after missing his first six attempts, giving the Thunderwolves the cushion they needed to pull away from a never-day-die Brock Badgers squad on Friday night at the Thunderdome.

Johnson’s basket put the Wolves up by five at the time and they went on to win 69-59, meaning they need to win just one of their final three games to clinch the OUA regular season title.

It salvaged a game that at the half Lakehead appeared in complete control of, up by 11 and starting to pull away. But after spotting Jamie Searle a basket to open the third, the Badgers went on a 13-0 run over the next six minutes, ultimately tying the game 37-37.

But that would be their plateau.

Yoosrie Salhia made good on a three-point play the next time down the court and hung onto the lead the rest of the way.

Ryan Thompson would have preferred an easier triumph, but LU’s veteran forward, who topped all scorers with just 14 points, will take what he can get at this stage of the game, the playoffs a mere two weeks away.

“No, it wasn’t pretty, but at this point we definitely needed the win,” said Thompson. “I guess the win is more important than how it looked. Tomorrow we’ve got to come out with a little more intensity defensively and try to be a little bit more focused.”

Thompson isn’t sure why the Wolves looked so different from half to half.

“I think we just got out of synch. We suffered on offence a little bit. Once we got back to it you could see, it started flowing a little bit more and everything got back on track,” Thompson said.

It was a game that was marred by a frightening injury two minutes into the fourth quarter. Brock’s Joel Whitty was cutting across the court when he turned one way and Johnson’s elbow turned the other, sending him crashing to the floor unconscious.

Whitty, who has a history of concussions, lay motionless on the floor for about 15 minutes before being carted off on a stretcher and taken across the street to Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre for observation.

Until that point the Badgers were in the midst of a heroic comeback, and trailed by just three at the time.  They managed to hang tight for about three more minutes before the Wolves took off for good.

Scott Morrison, Lakehead’s coach said the near comeback wasn’t surprising, given the way his team played most of the night.

“I think that in the third quarter we suffered from some of the mistakes that we got away with in the first half, Morrison said. “We didn’t establish our post in the first half, but we were able to knock some outside shots down. In the second half we tried to do it the same way and had a tougher luck shooting.”

Morrison knows he might have got away with one.

“At the end of the day we were fortunate they missed some open looks too,” he said. “We gave them some open looks, especially off second chances. They really killed us on the glass. We’re just lucky the missed some of those second looks from outside.”

Mark Gibson and Michael Cruickshank each scored 13 to lead Brock. Salhia, with 11 and Venzal Russell, with 10, were the only other Wolves to hit double figures.

The two teams will match up again on Saturday night. Tip-off is 8 p.m.