By Nathan Hutton (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 19, 2014
Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams had their home openers this weekend, and it couldn’t have gone any better. Both teams began their regular season up in Kelowna against the UBC-O Heat, and came away 2-0. The home-openers against the University of Northern British Columbia were expected to be much of the same.
The women got their game going first, and completely controlled the tempo against the T-Wolves. The T-Wolves started the game with pressure against the Cascades whenever they tried to bring the ball up the court, and continued with that pressure all game long. It was something that coach Al Tuchscherer said they had prepared for.
“We were prepared for their pressure, we haven’t seen a press like that this year — the zone pressure. It was something that we had prepared for a little bit during the week. I thought we did an okay job — there was a couple possessions where we fumbled it a little bit, but other than that, I thought we did an okay job.”
The most compelling stat of the game comes from the total number of shots taken by the Cascades, versus the number taken by the T-Wolves. The fact that they only hit six more shots than the T-Wolves is not that compelling, but the Cascades ended up taking 30 more shots than their opponents. It came out to 78-48 in shots attempted. The discrepancy in attempts can be attributed to many different scenarios, including the fact that the T-Wolves turned the ball over 30 times, or that the Cascades out-rebounded them 21-9 on the offensive glass, creating second chance opportunities.
Overall, the Cascades would go to win their home-opener 83-57 in their usual dominating fashion, and then finish the weekend with an 81-57 win in their Saturday action.
The men’s basketball team, like their female counterparts, came into the weekend 2-0, and looked to control the tempo against the 0-2 T-Wolves. The first game of the weekend was the first time that the UFV fans got the opportunity to see Manny Dulay in his new point guard role, and he impressed, notching 17 points with a trio of assists and a steal.
The Cascades impressed in the first game and walked away with the easy 82-59 win. The second game of the weekend, for some reason, troubled the Cascades; they couldn’t get anything going and failed to hit even easy shots.
The Cascades trailed by as many as 14 points, but came up with big play after big play to somehow retain their perfect record. The team came together in the last quarter and outscored the T-Wolves 20-9, including a pair of treys from Vijay Dhillon, and the go-ahead bucket from Nate Brown, to win the Cascades the game.
“Thank goodness we battled back, and the guys stayed together,” Cascades head coach Adam Friesen said to Cascades Media after the game. “But we’ve got to come out of the gates with a lot more urgency, and play at a higher standard than we did tonight. We have to find our energy based on the defensive end, not the offensive end, and if we keep this up, a loss is probably coming. We can’t keep squeaking by with close wins.”
