Horns prevail in playoff preview
By Woodard, Dale on February 8, 2020.
Dale Woodard
Lethbridge Herald
The University of Lethbridge Pronghorns women’s basketball team knows they’re headed to the post season.
On Friday night they got a dress rehearsal for what it’ll be like.
With a playoff spot already locked up and a chance to get a playoff home date to boot, the Horns took another step toward the latter goal with a 74-63 win over the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack in Canada West play at the 1st Choice Savings Centre to improve to 10-9.
Still, it didn’t come without a scrap as the Horns erased a small 31-28 deficit at the half and outscored the WolfPack 20-16 and 26-16 in the third and fourth quarters to pull away.
“Give credit to Thompson Rivers, they played really tough,” said Pronghorns head coach Dave Waknuk. “It was a battle. They came out really aggressive to start with and set the tone and we were just kind of in a street fight the rest of the way. I’m happy to say our defence made plays down the stretch and we were able to cause some key turnovers and that led to offence. But it was definitely a battle for 40 minutes. We’re starting playoff basketball season and that’s what these games are going to be like.”
Kacie Bosch led the Horns with 22 points, while Asnate Fomina hit for 12. Katie Keith had another double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds and Jessica Haenni had 10 points, six assists and two steals.
“We had some trouble scoring early. We couldn’t find the easy ones and had trouble getting the looks that usually go in for us,” said Waknuk. “So then to get back into this thing we were going to have to rely on our defence. So we dug in and defensively I thought we did a good job of team defence and that really made the difference for us.”
The Horns will go for the sweep in the rematch tonight at 5 p.m. then see how the other Canada West scenarios played out to see if they’ll get a home play-in game next weekend.
But Waknuk pointed to a better start tonight than Friday’s.
“I think we have to start (tonight) like we finished. I think we found our stride, but it took us a while to find what we wanted. I’m happy we found it, but we need more of it and in games that keep going like this we have to keep doing that for 40 minutes.”
The usual suspects led the Pronghorns on the scoresheet, it was the secondary help that the Horns head coach liked.
“Kacie was the ultimate in consistency today, she just did a lot of everything for us,” said Waknuk. “But Jessica had 10 points and six assists and two steals. We know we can lean on our main players, but when we get some secondary help from people like Jessica that makes a big difference. For her to shoot four-for-seven from the field and two-for-three from the three (point line), those are big numbers for us. For her to get six assists really helps us and solidifies another weapon for us.”
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