Wolves upend Warriors

The Lakehead Thunderwolves men’s basketball team cleaned up the glass and took care of business, beating the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks 79-65, Saturday night at Waterloo to earn a split of their two-game series.

With the win, the ‘Wolves push their record to 10-2 and remain one game up on the second-place Windsor Lancers in the OUA West. Laurier drops to 5-7, tied with Brock for sixth.

Lakehead’s win was decided in the rebounding department where the ‘Wolves held a massive 49-22 advantage; 17-5 on the offensive end. Senior guard Jamie Searle (Belleville, Ontario) and sophomore post Yoosrie Salhia (Toronto) both notched double-doubles with Searle putting home 12 points with 10 boards, and Salhia going for 11 and 13.

Sophomore guards Joe Jones  and Greg Carter added 14 points while post Brendan King added scored 13 with five boards.

Laurier was paced by Travis Berry’s 19 points while Maxwell Allin added 11 points and nine rebounds.  Jess MacDonald had 13 points.

"(I’m) very pleased with the effort from our guys tonight,” said Thunderwolves head coach Scott Morrison. “We did a good job on our adjustments from game one and went to battle a tough and hard working Laurier team for 40 minutes. Laurier did a great job all weekend limiting our outside looks and three-point shots. Tonight we did a much better job attacking the rim and getting to the foul line."

Lakehead was a scoreless 0-7 from beyond the arc and managed to make up for the lack of outside opportunities with strong penetration and second chances on the glass. The Wolves made 25-36 free throws  while the Hawks went 14-20. LU also held an advantage from the field going 27-62  to Laurier