The Kodiaks are golden
If there was ever a good time for Brad Karren to see a scowl on his player’s faces, now was the time. Ultimately, those stone-faced game faces turned into smiles on the women’s basketball team as the Kodiaks captured the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference championship Saturday night at the Val Matteotti Gymnasium following an 85-54 win over the Calgary St. Mary’s Lightning.
“It was quite impressive,” said Karren, whose team’s gold medal season caps off a 21-0 regular season for the second straight year and wraps up a 3-0 weekend after wins over the Lakeland College Rustlers Thursday night and the SAIT Trojans Friday night. “Even in the warmups I could tell they were focused. They weren’t laughing and joking around like the normally do. They looked serious and I remember one of the coaches saying ‘They look almost mad.’ and I said ‘Yeah, I’ve never seen this before.’ They were pretty focused.”
With the gold medal and a berth at the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association championship in two weeks on the line, the Kodiaks translated those pre-game glares into stifling defence, opening up a 43-29 lead at the half before grounding the Lightning to nine points in the third quarter.
“It was our defence, it was something else,” said Karren. “In the first half we held them down in the 20s. In the second half we switched some things up that we hadn’t done, but had been working on for a while, a few different tweaks at halftime. We came out and I said ‘This is our moment. This is where you show you’re better than other teams. You
have to come out and play the defence I know you can.’ It was smothering. That third quarter was something else. After that we just kind of rolled.”
And they rolled in front of an enthusiastic and appreciative hometown crowd at the Val Matteotti Gymnasium.
“We’re comfortable there,” said Karren. “That’s where we practise two hours every night there. We have our home games there and we have our fans that come out and support us and tonight it was really. We had a ton
of people out and that’s kind of what the girls feed off of. The more cheering they have for them, the more aggressive they play. They basically helped us win as big as we did. It was way more fun to win at home.”
Sunder West led the Kodiaks with 25 points and Emma Lowry replied with 20 and 11 rebounds.
Shantaya Strebel came in off the bench and added 10 points.
In the bronze medal game, the Trojans downed the Medicine Hat Rattlers 57-39.