Scott Stewart, TWU Spartans

LANGLEY, British Columbia – After an evenly matched first half the UBC Thunderbirds pulled away from the Trinity Western to defeat the Spartans 70-48 in Canada West women's basketball action Saturday night at the Langley Events Centre in Langley, B.C.

UBC's win puts them at a 10-4 season, while the Spartans drop down to an 8-6 season record. 

On the night the Thunderbirds were the better shooting team as they finished shooting 43.1 per cent (28-65) from the field, while the Spartans struggled shooting 28.4 per cent (19-67). 

Rookie forward Nicole Fransson (Edmonton, Alta.) led the Spartans with 12 points and nine rebounds, four of which were offensive. UBC had four players finish in double-digit scoring led by Keylyn Filewich's 15 points and a game high 14 rebounds, four of which were offensive. 

In an evenly matched first quarter UBC was strong inside, while TWU's advantage was from behind the three-point line. The T-birds five offensive rebounds were matched by TWU's third-year guard Julia Marshall's (Langley) 2-3 from the three point line as UBC led 16-13 after 10 minutes 

Three minutes in the second quarter UBC extended their lead to 22-15 by going four-four from the line. TWU responded, and after a three-point basket by fifth year guard Jessie Brown (Langley) the Spartans had cut the lead to 22-20. The T-birds finished the quarter with a 8-to-4 run to lead 30-24 at the end of the first half.  

Out of the break the Thunderbirds took control of the game shooting 50 per cent (8-16) from the field, to TWU's 29.4 per cent (5-17). UBC's Filewich scored half the Thunderbird's points in the quarter as UBC outscored the Spartans 18-11 to take a 48-35 into the final quarter. 

The Spartans were unable to counter the Thunderbirds shooting in the final quarter. UBC closed out the game out the game with a 22-13 advantage in the final 10 minutes to earn the 70-48 win. 

QUOTABLE
TWU Head Coach Cheryl Jean-Paul
"From yesterday's game to today, what we asked of the team, was to show us what fight looked like. Our conference and some of our province are too tough to not show up on the first night. I think if we had shown the fight in the first half that we showed today, yesterday, we might be looking at splitting a weekend."  

"The challenge is we saw 20 minutes of fight defensively and the unfortunate part is that they've already made the adjustments from what we do offensively, we really struggled to generate any offence from the disruptive defence we were getting. We forced a lower shooting percentage in the first half, we tried to generate some looks without using some of our main components that we've relied on the last little bit. I think we went away from who we are as an offensive group, we then have to revisit that and make sure we're ready to go. It was nice to gain people that offensively we had lost in the last few games." 

"For us now our challenge and our opportunity is to make sure that we can now bring all of those scores into the same game on the same night. If we can do that and we add the fight that we started seeing defensively, I think good things will come." 

NOTABLE

• The T-birds shot 10-12 from the foul line to the Spartans 5-11.
• The Spartans finished with 42 rebounds, 17 offensive, while the Thunderbirds finished with 45 rebounds, 12 offensive.
• TWU's bench outscored the UBC bench 22-16.
• UBC had a 36-14 edge in points in the paint. 

UP NEXT

Trinity Western now travels to Winnipeg to take on the University of Manitoba next weekend for Friday (Jan 18) and Saturday (Jan 19) night games. Tip off times are 4 p.m. (PT) and 3 p.m. (PT) respectively. UBC is on the road in Brandon next weekend. All games can be seen live on Canadawest.tv.

-TW-