Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – It was almost like déjà vu in the David Atkinson Gym as cold shooting doomed the Griffins women's basketball team to another defeat at the hands of the Lethbridge Pronghorns.
In Saturday's 75-41 loss, MacEwan shot just 17.3 per cent from the field, which was actually better than Friday, when they went 15.1 in a 64-34 setback.
"I think a lot of it is coming from us," said MacEwan head coach Katherine Adams. "We put ourselves in good positions and they're shots we'd take 100 times over because we think they're great shots, but perhaps the pressure coming at us just speeds us up a little bit and causes us to miss."
Whatever it was, the Griffins suffered through long stretches of futility, including two different stretches longer than four minutes in the second quarter without any points.
MacEwan was saved by the free-throw line, going 20-for-28, because they went just 9-for-52 from the field.
Noelle Kilbreath led MacEwan with 13 points, while rookie Unity Obasuyi had nine.
Tobore Okome produced a double double for Lethbridge (18 points and 13 rebounds), Vlada Hozalova had 14 points and Kyra Collier recorded eight points and 11 boards.
"Talking about this Lethbridge team in general, the thing that makes them so difficult to play against is they have a lot of players contributing in many different ways, so there is not one player you can kind of key in on," said Adams. "You try to take away one thing and they capitalize on another because they have depth across the board who can really score in different ways. That's challenging.
"They certainly killed us on the boards today. Inside we got mis-matched a little bit and we were just a little bit slow defensively. Yesterday, I thought we defended well enough to be in a game; we just had difficulty scoring. Defensively, today, we gave up a few more easy ones than we would have liked."
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— MacEwan Griffins (@MacEwanGriffins) January 21, 2024
Noelle Kilbreath hits a three and leads @MacEwanU with 12 points so far, but the Griffins trail @UofLPronghorns 56-30 after 30 minutes.@CanadaWest #GriffNation pic.twitter.com/inbA6i6u1t
Indeed, Lethbridge won the rebounding battle 54-36 and shot 39.1 per cent.
Next up for the Griffins is a road trip to Winnipeg next weekend. Adams found something to build on, liking what the late-game rotation of Samantha Hickey, Sofia Makinen, Toni Gordon, Allie Spenrath and Obasuyi brought to the floor.
"I thought the group we had on at the end of the game created some good energy and just shifted the momentum a little bit," she said. "We certainly played with a different energy and that's something we can carry forward – how we move the ball and how we generated those open shots. Not that we capitalized on all of them, but at least we generated some steals that led to some transition opportunities."
