Point guard Bourcier UBC’s ‘glue guy’
Second-year T-Bird, ‘does a lot of things ... on both sides of the ball,’ coach says
Mason Bourcier is healthy. Kevin Hanson is happy.
The latter is tied directly to the former, what with how crucial veteran bench boss Hanson believes second-year point guard Bourcier is to the UBC Thunderbirds.
“If he plays well, we generally play well,” explained Hanson, who’s in the midst of preparing for a best-of-three Canada West quarter-final against the Fraser Valley Cascades, which gets going Thursday (7 p.m.) at War Memorial. “He’s our glue guy.
“He’s had an incredible year and especially for a second-year guy. He does a lot of things for us on both sides of the ball.”
UBC (17-3) is the No. 6 ranked team in U Sports and it’s the third seed in the Canada West playoffs. The T-Birds had a bye last week, getting some time off while the sixthseeded Cascades (13-7) were rallying from a 16-point, second-quarter deficit to defeat the 11th-seeded UNBC Timberwolves (9-11) by a 67-59 count in a first-round playoff matchup.
The T-Birds dropped their final two regular-season games two weeks ago, falling 85-75 and then 87-79 to the host Alberta Golden Bears in a pair of weekend encounters in Edmonton. Due to a foot injury, Bourcier played a season-low 18 minutes and scored a season-low two points in the first game of the set, and then played 28 minutes the following evening and had nine points.
That circles us back to Hanson’s original comments. Bourcier averaged 30 minutes and 11.6 points for the T-Birds in league play. He said that he had a “little tweak,” but he’s “feeling good now after a little bit of rest.”
“Last year, I was put into a leadership role and, being a point guard, it is something that I’m used to,” continued Bourcier, a former Kelowna Owls high school star. “It’s a little bit different now because the team has some older guys, but it doesn’t change how I do things.”
Bourcier quarterbacks an offence that features the fourthand sixth-highest scorers in Canada West in fourth-year guards Jadon Cohee (19.3 points per game) and Manroop Clair (18.9). It also features the country’s leader in shooting percentage in second-year forward Grant Shephard (66.7 per cent, as part of his 16.7 points per game), another former Kelowna standout.
Bourcier’s defence on the perimeter may be his greatest asset against the Cascades, though. Fraser Valley attempted 31 more three-pointers than the next busiest team from outside the arc in the conference. It connected on 30.5 per cent (204of-669), which was the fourthbest percentage in Canada West from three-point range.
Against UNBC, Cascades third-year forward Sukman Sandhu was 4-for-8 from the three on his way to a gamehigh 18 points.
“They’re coming in confident. They’ve got some athletic guys, they’ve got some shooters,” Hanson said of the Cascades.
UBC and Fraser Valley didn’t play in the regular season this year. UBC swept both ends of a regular season doubleheader last season.
Game 2 is slated for Friday (7 p.m.) at War Memorial, while Game 3, if necessary, would be Saturday (7 p.m.).