Horns ready for a battle
Red-hot Dinos in town tonight
Shortened week or not, the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns women’s basketball team will be cranking up the intensity a notch. Given their opponent will be doing that as well, the Horns know they’ll have to match it as they welcome the Calgary Dinos to the 1st Choice Savings Centre in Canada West play tonight at 6 p.m.
Heading into the final weekend of the semester, the Pronghorns sit at 5-3, having snapped a three-game losing skid with a 76-63 win over Winnipeg Wesmen Saturday night at the 1st Choice Savings Centre. That puts them in a log jam in the middle of the Canada West standings, tied with Manitoba and the University of the Fraser Valley and two points back of UNBC, Regina, Alberta and Victoria.
Meanwhile, the Dinos (7-3) roll into town on a five-game winning streak that has them tied for second behind the Saskatchewan Huskies.
So it’s a given game faces will be firmly intact come tipoff tonight.
“Getting ready for Calgary, we have to get ready for their intensity,” said Pronghorns interim coach Dave Waknuk. “Playing at such a high level offensively and defensively, we have to match that intensity, focus, communication, all of those little things in basketball that they do well. So we have to try and mimic that in practice. We had a good week, it’s been a quick turnaround for us, but it’s exciting to get a calibre team like Calgary in. You know they’re going to come prepared and we know they’re going to come aggressive. After Winnipeg, I thought we did a good job on Saturday to realize we have to step up our level of play to finish off the semester. It’s a great test against Calgary.”
Kacie Bosch (10.5 points-pergame), Amy Mazutinec (10.3 ppg) and Katie Keith (10 ppg) lead the Pronghorns this season. Keith posted her fourth double-double of the season in Saturday’s win.
The one less day to prepare for the defending champs is a doubleedged sword.
“I like the shortened week, but I also don’t at the same time,” said Bosch, who had 20 points in Saturday’s win over Winnipeg. “It’s nice to have a day in between the games to relax and watch film and get to know the other team a little bit better from their performance the night before. But I like the shortened week a lot because I like the high intensity practices.”
Ideally, that will spill into tonight’s game as the Horns look to derail the Dinos hot streak.
“They’re always really tough,” said Bosch. “They’re very aggressive defenders and they really like to shoot the three and drive the ball. We’re just going to have to play really solid defence against them and take away their main looks. We just have to be able to handle the pressure a lot better than we have in the past little bit, but we’ve been working on it all week so we should be good to go.”
On the men’s side, the Horns look to snap a four-game slide after starting the season at 4-0.
They’ll have their work cut out for them against the 10-0 defending U SPORTS champion Dinos tonight at 8.
The Pronghorns were the last team to beat the Dinos last season, topping Calgary 91-89 in overtime last January in Lethbridge.
Despite their losing streak, the Pronghorns still lead the conference in team offence with 91.9 points per game and sit third in team defence allowing 77 points against.
Mike Pierzchala leads the Pronghorns with 18.8 points per game. Zac Overwater is second with 15.9 points per game and leads Lethbridge in rebounds with 7.3 per game. California junior college transfer Eric Pierce is averaging 12.4 points in his first season with the team.
The second half of the homeand-home series heads to Calgary Saturday night.
The games will be streamed live on
During tonight’s game, the University of Lethbridge Students’ Union is running a food drive to support its food bank and Pronghorn Athletics would like to invite all southern Alberta Students and anyone age 17 or younger to bring a food donation and receive free admission to the game.
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