Strong stack back from break for Cougars

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author: nathan mccarville| sports writer

just keep winning, just keep winning, winning/Casey Marshall/Arthur Images

 

Women’s basketball team continues its dominance

The women’s basketball team is back from the holiday break and have extended their current win streak to 6, beating the Mount Royal University Cougars twice over this past weekend.

The (good) Cougars strong start into the year after their month-long hiatus from playing against other teams does not seem to have slowed the team down in the slightest. The Cougars were able to beat their Alberta counterparts by 70 points on January 5, finishing the game with a score of 101-31. The following match finished with a final score of 93-41 as the Cougars completed the sweep. The team’s current record sits at 10 wins with only 1 loss in the regular season after their weekend that was absent of a loss.

In both games, numerous players were able to rack up points in the double figures, four in the first game including Kyanna Giles with 14 points, Carolina Goncalves with 13 points, Kyia Giles with 10 points, and Lauryn Prokop with 10 points.

In the second game back after the break, six players were able to do the same: Kyanna Giles having another excellent game with 20 points, Christina Mccusker with 14 points, Kyia Giles with 13, Charlotte Kot with 12, Sara Hubenig with 11, and Carolina Goncalves with 10. The propensity for such a large amount of players to excel against the Mount Royal Cougars marks a strong return for the Cougars from the break and a morale booster for the team as well as fans.

Concerning the big wins, the first of which holding the record for the largest margin that the Cougars women’s basketball team has ever won by since the 2010-11 season where a game previously held the record with 69 points. Christina Mccusker, a fourth-year engineering student, said about the team’s performance, “It’s always great to get a couple of wins coming into the second semester to shake the rust off and get some momentum heading into a pretty tough second half of the season for us. As for it being the largest margin honestly I didn’t even know about that, but there were still lots of things we would have liked to improve about that game but it was a good start for sure.”

Regarding the effect that the winning streak has had on the team, in terms of how the basketball team has been thinking about the future of the season, Mccusker said, “I wouldn’t say a winning streak really has an effect on us because most of our players that have been around the last couple seasons, we have had similar records, so we are pretty used to just taking one game at a time and trying not to get too ahead of ourselves. It’s a great feeling to be up there in the rankings, but again the most important part is getting one win at a time and closer to our final goal which is a national title.”

Regarding the hiatus that the basketball team took in not playing against any other university teams for a month and the effects that this could have had on the team, Mccusker stated, “There is always a little bit of rust the first game back after the Christmas break, but it was alas good for us it gave a much-needed break and allowed for some injuries we had (including myself) to have some time and get healthy again.”

When asked why the cougars were able to dominate the court to such a degree, she said, “I would say the double-digit scoring would be due to great ball movement and team cooperation just finding the open player and really sharing the ball when one option was taken away from us.”

The Cougars are set to play another two games this coming weekend against the University of Alberta Pandas on the U of A home court. The Cougars’ strong start back into the regular season after the break offers a favourable vantage into the future in hopes that they can keep up the hard work and make their way into the end of the season where the Canada West finals await, and with a third-place ranking in Canada for the University of Regina Cougars, fans can remain hopeful that their team can take home the national title.

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