The UFV Cascades rode a wave of momentum into the Canada West Quarter-Finals Saturday, but their 2025-26 campaign came to an end in an 80-66 playoff loss to the host Alberta Golden Bears.
Just 24 hours earlier at the Saville Community Sports Centre, the Cascades punched their ticket to the quarter-finals after a gutsy 73-67 win over the University of Regina Cougars. It was a contest defined by razor-thin margins. The game was tied on eight different occasions and featured five lead changes. UFV led by as many as eight early, before Regina knotted the score at 65 late in the fourth.
UFV responded with composure.
Closing on an 8-2 run, the Cascades escaped the play-in round with a six point victory and a date with Alberta on Valentine’s Day.
“This was a great win for us today,” point guard Bennett O’Connor said post-game.
“Regina is a really good team, and it was a physical game. Just happy to get this one and focus on tomorrow. We have a very experienced team, and we play composed. Every day in practice we go as hard at each other as we can. And that’s what makes us so strong, mentally and physically.”
O’Connor poured in a game high 22 points, adding four rebounds and three assists. He was nearly automatic from the free-throw line, knocking down 11 of 12 attempts from the charity stripe.
But Saturday told a different story.
From the opening tip, the third-seeded Golden Bears imposed their tempo. Kyle Varner and Isaac Simon led Alberta with 21 and 19 points, respectively, as crisp ball movement created clean looks and stretched UFV beyond the arc. The Bears were just as sharp defensively, disrupting the Cascades’ rhythm and limiting their ability to generate quality opportunities.
Alberta generated scoring bursts with pace, a trait UFV had leaned on all season. The Cascades, meanwhile, struggled to string together sustained runs and too often settled for early three-point attempts. The Golden Bears capitalized, pulling away in the second half.
The numbers told the story. UFV shot just five for 29 from beyond the arc — a 17 per cent conversion rate — compared to Alberta’s 35 per cent from three.
In the final game of his U SPORTS career, fifth year star Dario Lopez led UFV with 24 points and seven rebounds, but support was limited in the second leg of a back-to-back.
Sharpshooter Dilveer Randhawa logged just 12 minutes and was held scoreless, after scoring 13 on Friday and playing a huge part in UFV’s victory over Regina. Fresh off a Canada West player of the week nod, Ismael Hernandez also struggled, managing just one point against Alberta. With his shins heavily taped, the Spaniard appeared to be battling through injury.
The Cascades showed fight, opening the third quarter with six straight points in just over a minute, but never found the late-game surge that carried them past the Cougars on Friday afternoon.
For a program that closed the regular season 6-1 over its last seven games, punched above its weight in a physical first-round playoff win, and leaned on veteran leadership from Lopez and Matthias Klim all season, the loss will sting.
Still, the 2025-26 campaign signalled real progress, with UFV flashing high-level competitiveness in a rugged Canada West landscape. The foundation is in place. The next step is learning to absorb — and answer — the kind of playoff runs a program of Alberta’s caliber can unleash.
