Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics

-With files from Dinos Athletics

CALGARY – In a classic tale-of-two-halves contest, the Griffins were ultimately doomed by a poor start in an 80-69 loss to the Calgary Dinos on Friday.

Calgary opened the game on a 16-0 run and blitzed the Griffins 31-9 in the opening 10 minutes.

Caught on their backfoot, the Griffins went nearly 10 minutes of action without scoring a bucket before hitting a shot at the buzzer to send them into the break on a positive note.

But even though the Griffins slowed down the Dinos a bit in the second quarter, they still trailed 52-21 at the half.
"We had 20 first-half turnovers and 16 of those were unforced mental mistakes," lamented head coach Mike Connolly. "Combined with only three assists, that killed us.

"They also hit their first six three-point shots to start the game, which helped contribute to a poor first half for us."

However, MacEwan came out with a new fire in the second half and outscored the Dinos 48-28 to nearly get the deficit into single digits before running out of time.

"The guys continued to work in the second half, and we won that by 20, but it was too little, too late," said Connolly.

Matthew Osunde led the Griffins with 18 points and six rebounds, while Job Janda chipped in 14 points and three players – Milan Jaksic, Scottie Austin and Taylor Cook – had nine.

Calgary was led by Ezeoha Santiago, who scored 21, Aidan Smith (17 points) and Jackson Bayles, who narrowly missed a double double with 13 points and nine boards.

With the result, the Griffins fall to 0-5 on the season, while Calgary is now 3-2.

The teams will meet again on Saturday (6 p.m., Canada West TV) and the Griffins will try to recapture the momentum they had in Friday's second half.

"Hopefully, we can carry that into tomorrow," said Connolly. "We need to focus more on defence at the beginning of the game and the rest will come."