THESE THUNDERBIRDS ARE ELECTRIC ALL OVER
Hoops team looks tremendous on paper, and numbers don’t lie, Howard Tsumura writes.
In a signature season, one where high expectations mesh with results, you can pluck a box score, examine it with a purist’s eye and find the kind of numbers that defy standard metrics.
And for the UBC Thunderbirds men’s basketball team, which polished off a two-game sweep of the Brandon Bobcats this weekend at War Memorial Gym, the unreal has become almost commonplace this season.
So deep, talented and versatile is coach Kevin Hanson’s team that these ’Birds, now 15-1 with four more Canada West conference games left, make you think to the 20-0 campaign, in 200506.
Case in point was Friday’s 127-62 win over the Bobcats, a game in which the No. 2-ranked ’Birds scored at least 30 points in every quarter and had 97 heading into the fourth en route to the highest-scoring regulation game in the history of the program. For perspective, the University of B.C. has played men’s basketball since 1915.
But there’s so much more to consider.
The ’Birds’ bench outscored the entire Brandon team 68-62, and it held a plus-19 advantage in second-chance points. Limiting a team with the offensive prowess of Brandon to just 62 points is impressive enough, but to do it in a game in which the offensive pace is run at such a high tempo is something else entirely. Consider that within its tidal wave of offence, UBC had enough defence to limit the Bobcats to three second-chance points on the night.
UBC produced seven doubledigit scorers in the win and those players combined to score 106 points in 122 total player minutes. That’s near the point- per-minute standard by which Michael Jordan’s best offensive games were judged. But what makes it so much more impressive is that so many Thunderbirds were able to bring that level of productivity.
The ’Birds have perhaps the nation’s two most versatile players in Conor Morgan and Jordan Jensen-Whyte, but on Friday no one had an off night. A good example was blue-collar forward Patrick Simon, who during a juncture of play, with the game’s outcome still in doubt, grabbed two key offensive rebounds and twice knocked down three-point buckets. Over that short stretch,
The ’Birds’ bench outscored the entire Brandon team 68-62 and it held a plus-19 advantage in second-chance points.
his blend of brute desire and clutch shooting helped turn the tide.
The first place to gauge efficiency on the court is free-throw success. The adage of a team’s mental state being a direct reflection of its ability to hit from the charity stripe rings true with the ’Birds. UBC entered the weekend No. 1 nationally in free-throw makes and attempts, and including Saturday’s 87-53 win over Brandon, the team shot 53 of 68 for 78 per cent in the two wins.
Certainly, they’re about more than their numbers, but this weekend’s sweep reinforced the fact that sometimes a team can live up to the hype. In other basketball action Saturday:
The Simon Fraser Clan men’s team trailed at Montana State Billings by 14 points, but closed to within three at 71-68 with under five minutes left before falling to 0-12 in NCAA D2 GNAC play with a 93-86 loss. Point guard Michael Provenzano played all 40 minutes and led SFU with 23 points.
The Clan women’s team (10-2), ranked 21st nationally, got 17 points from Elisa Homer in a 60-49 win at Western Oregon. Sitting at 19-3 overall, SFU returns home Thursday to face Northwest Nazarene, and with it, a chance to win 20 games in a season for the third time in its NCAA era.
The UBC women (12-4) got 24 points from Maddison Penn, battling Brandon down the stretch to extract a 73-66 win that gave ’Birds head coach Deb Huband her 300th career Canada West victory.
In PacWest women’s play, guard Reiko Ohama more than doubled her scoring average, piling up 25 points as North Vancouver’s host Capilano University Blues (12-0) remained perfect in league play with a 73-84 win Friday over Vancouver’s Langara College Falcons. Notes: Nicole Saxvik, Celine Tardif and Stephanie Schaupmeyer each scored on the power play for UBC (17-3-3-1), while Tory Micklash made 17 saves as the Thunderbirds, the nation’s No. 1-ranked women’s hockey team, completed back-to-back shutout wins in a Canada West sweep of the Lethbridge Pronghorns (3-17-1-3) with a 3-0 win Saturday at Doug Mitchell Arena. On Friday, Katie Zinn scored the game’s only goal and Amelia Boughn made 13 stops for the shutout as UBC edged the Pronghorns 1-0.