Giles dials it up as Cougars prepare for U Sports s title shot
Cougars guard focused on the Canada West crown before hosting nationals
Kyanna Giles doesn’t want to coast into the U Sports women’s basketball championship.
The University of Regina Cougars’ second-year guard wants her team to be rolling when the national championship takes over the Centre for Kinesiology, Health and Sport from March 8 to 11. The Cougars are guaranteed a berth in the eight-team Canadian championship as the host squad.
“My end goal isn’t to just make it to nationals, it’s to win it,” Giles said. “Knowing what our actual end goal is is an advantage, but we know that we have to practise extra hard because we’re already in there. We have to get motivated to know that we want to win.”
There are playoff games ahead for the Cougars even with a national berth locked up. The Cougars are to play host to the University of Calgary Dinos in a best-of-three Canada West women’s basketball semifinal. Games are scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and, if necessary, Saturday.
The possibility of being the Canada West champion further inspires the Cougars, ranked second in U Sports women’s basketball. Calgary is 10th.
“We don’t want just one (championship) banner, we want two and Canada West comes first,” Giles said. “Right now, we’re focused on Canada West. When that’s over in two weeks, then we can focus on nationals.”
Giles’s focus has been sharp long before the Cougars opened the Canada West playoffs last weekend by sweeping the UBC Thunderbirds in a best-of-three quarterfinal. She has scored more than 20 points in six of the Cougars’ last seven games, regular season and playoffs included.
Giles posted a career-high 28 points in Regina’s 71-62 win Feb. 17 over the visiting Thunderbirds. On Feb. 16, she had a team-high 20 points in Regina’s 85-70 win. She was recognized as Canada West’s female first star of the week after her weekend performance.
Cougars head coach Dave Taylor has encouraged Giles to step up by increasing her playing time to 30 minutes per game, up from 24, down the stretch.
“The bigger the games, the better she plays,” Taylor said. “She just loves those moments.”
Giles, from Winnipeg, has stood out since being named the U Sports rookie of the year last season. She earned the honour after averaging 12.9 points and a team-high 7.3 rebounds per game.
“She has improved in her understanding of the game and how to be more consistent,” Taylor said. “Going through your first year of university, it’s all brand new and completely different from high school. In the summer, she kept getting better in terms of her skill set and her maturity in understanding the game.”
Giles’s goal was to improve on her rookie season. Giles, whose twin sister Kyia is also a member of the Cougars, has accomplished that while averaging a team-high 17.3 points per game.
“The only thing that I’m scared of is staying the same,” Giles said. “After having a good rookie season, I knew that I had to put in the work to be better than that. It was pressure on myself, but I lived up to it and that was nice.”
In other semifinal action, the University of Saskatchewan Huskies are to play host to the Trinity Western Spartans. The winners advance to the Canada West conference final, which begins March 2. The Cougars would host to the final after finishing first in Canada West with an 18-2 record.
NOTES: Jordan Kulbida and Zak Zborosky were both named to their respective Canada West allrookie teams Wednesday. Kulbida had eight points in 27 games with the Cougars women’s hockey team. Zborosky recorded 22 points in 18 games with the men’s team ... Georgia Kaluznick, Lexy King, Bree Crookshanks, McKinley Penner, Noah Choboter, Brian Palaschuk, Jean-Philippe Dufresne, Jong Hoon Lee, Etienne Paquin-Foisy and Noah Wasyliw are to represent the U of R at the U Sports swimming championships Thursday to Saturday at the University of Toronto.