DAVID LARKINS, Wesmen Athletics
WINNIPEG — Blink and you might have missed it.
The Winnipeg Wesmen used a quick run to turn a tie game into a double-digit gap and ran away with a 101-81 win over the Brandon Bobcats in a Canada West men's basketball game Saturday night at the Duckworth Centre.
The Wesmen closed the third quarter on a 13-2 run over the final 2:16 of the period to break a tie game and eventually hand the Bobcats a loss and a split of the home-and-home series that closes the first semester of play.
Winnipeg outscored the Bobcats 62-47 after halftime.
The Bobcats scored a 109-107 double-overtime win on Friday, but the Wesmen found an extra gear Saturday, with Sean Tarver scoring 24 of his game-high 33 points after halftime — including four out of five three-pointers.
"The nice part, in my opinion, was when we were able to make our runs it was off of things like grabbing an O-board and having a second possession, keeping a play alive and giving us a chance," Wesmen head coach Mike Raimbault said. "So it wasn't necessarily just coming out and hitting shots. We feel like at a certain point every game we're gonna get hot and hit a few shots."
Tarver added 13 rebounds for his fifth double-double of the season and second in a row.
"Tarver made some tough ones," Brandon head coach Gil Cheung said. "We tried to chase him off the line and he got going and it ended up being pretty quick – it was a four-point game and it jumped up to 12. We tried to stop the bleeding, tried to call timeouts, but the momentum was going there."
The Wesmen are the highest scoring team in the country and Saturday marked the fourth time this season they've scored over 100 points in a game.
Narcisse Ambanza added 29 points, eight assists and six rebounds for Winnipeg (8-4), which also got 10 points and 11 rebounds from Spas Nikolov.
Troy Grant had 20 points to lead Brandon (2-10). Tyvon Cooper added 15 before being ejected in the fourth quarter. Steven Chieng chipped in 16 and Pookie Saunders had 12.
Photo: Shanlee McLennan/Wesmen Athletics