The Badgers’ women’s basketball team could not withstand the Laurier Golden Hawks comeback as Brock fell 61-60 on the road, to head into the winter break with a 5-4 record.
Madalyn Weinert led the Badgers in scoring with 23 points, as Oluwatitio Akinnusi registered a game-high 14 rebounds, seven of which were on the offensive glass.
The first quarter began positively for the Badgers as they knocked down three three-pointers in the frame, two by Olivia Fiorucci and one by Angeline Campbell, accounting for nine of Brock’s 17 points in the quarter.
Defensively, the Badgers limited the Golden Hawks to 25 per cent shooting, including only one made three-pointer, as the Badgers had the six-point lead through one.
In the second, Weinert, the OUA’s second-leading point scoring coming into the contest, showed her all-star calibre skillset. The junior guard scored 10 of Brock’s 21 points in the frame as she drained both of her three-point attempts and only missed one field goal going four-for-five in the quarter.
Akinnusi also showed her size and strength picking up six rebounds in the quarter, three of which were on the offensive end as rebounding was a huge strength for the Badgers. They outrebounded Laurier 25-12 in the half and 48-29 in the game, which led to Brock outscoring the Golden Hawks by 13 in second-chance points.
The combination of rebounding and high shooting percentage gave Brock the 38-31 halftime lead when things quickly went downhill.
The Golden Hawks came out of the break on fire, shooting nearly 40 per cent as Laurier shooters combined for four three-pointers in the quarter. Brittyn Graves buried a three to beat the buzzer and give the Golden Hawks the one-point advantage as the Badgers could not contain the lethal Laurier sharpshooters.
Along with the inability to defend, the Badgers could not shoot the ball nor complete routine passes, committing seven turnovers in the frame compared to Laurier’s one.
Those same miscues carried into the fourth as the quarter started off similarly to how the third ended.
The Badgers shot an abysmal 22 per cent from the field – their lowest in any quarter in the game – as the Golden Hawk defenders clogged the paint, which resulted in Brock missing routine shots that they’d typically convert.
Akinnusi was limited to only five points in the entire game since she was double teamed in the low block. She was a focal point for the Laurier defense, especially after her 37-point performance last weekend against McMaster.
However, the Badgers got lucky in the fourth as the Golden Hawks’ shooters cooled down, only scoring one field goal in the entire ten minutes.
The Achilles’ heel for the Badgers was that Laurier was able to get to the free throw line at will going seven-for-nine, which attributed to a 10-0 run midway through the quarter.
That run by the Golden Hawks gave them their largest lead of the game, eight points, before Brock’s key players re-took control of the game, attempting to stage their own comeback.
Noor Bazzi and Weinert hit back-to-back jumpers before Weinert added a layup to cut the deficit to just one, with a minute and a half remaining.
The Golden Hawks went down the floor but failed to score, giving the Badgers the chance to re-take the lead and salvage the victory.
However, the Badgers missed three opportunities to take the lead in the final minute, as the comeback fell short, resulting in a heartbreaking 61-60 loss to go into the winter break devastated.
Next up for the Badgers is a home matchup against the TMU Bold on Jan. 5th before heading to Toronto to take on the Varsity Blues the next day. For more information on the Badgers’ women’s basketball team, head to gobadgers.ca.