Windsor wins over Ottawa in OUA regional final at Montpetit Hall


Windsor 83 Cape Breton 70
Windsor 58 Ottawa 55


John Doherty
SPORTS EDITOR

riday’s win 83-70 against Cape Breton led the Lancers Women’s Basketball team to a CIS championship berth, but it was Saturday’s East Regional finals victory against Ottawa that gave Windsor the most satsfaction.

After a hard loss to Ottawa at the OUA finals last week, Windsor rebounded with an 58-55 victory against the Gee-Gees this past weekend at Monpetit Hall.

The Gee-Gees opened with a strong defensive and out-scored the Lancers 15-6 in the first quarter while holding them to 8.3 per cent in shooting.

“One of the things that happened to us last week is that we were down by a certain amount of points in the first quarter and we panicked and let go,” Lancers head coach Chantal Vallee said.

“We kept working hard and the girls just picked up.”

A winning 19-5 second quarter set the momentum for the Lancers, who held the Gee-Gees scoreless for nearly five minutes. Two free throws by Miah-Marie Langlois put Windsor in possession of the lead for the first time in the game.

“We really focused on ourselves,” said Vallee. “We wanted to go there and play who we are—play tougher. We really stayed focused on what we do and just competed as hard as we could.”

The effect of last weeks’ loss was not evident in the Lancers performance.

Windsor’s Jessica Clemencon went 12-for-12 in free-throw and scored 18 points in total, while Miah Langlois led scoring with 20 points.

“We never addressed the win the loss,” Vallee said. “We just said this is about us, we have our goals. It’s not about the score, it’s about us going out and playing like who we are.”

“We were not even concerned about the score. We just followed the game plan and remained focused and the score took care of itself.”

Player of the game Bess Lennox led the Gee-Gees with17 points with Rookie point guard Kellie Ring scoring 16 points.

Friday night, the Lancers advanced to the East regional final after defeating the Cape Breton Capers 83-70.

The Lancers opened the game with a quick 5-0 run before the Capers responded to tie the game at seven. Windsor started the second quarter with 14 unanswered points to set up an unwavering lead.

The Lancers led 44-31 at the half and 65-42 heading into the final quarter.

Windsor totaled 52 rebounds to the Capers’ 32. Clemencon led the Lancers with a high 30 points while Iva Peklova had a game high 10 rebounds.

The fourth-seeded Lancers now look to repeat as national champions.

The CIS championship starts Saturday at the Jack Simpson Gym at the University of Calgary in Calgary with a quarter-final round and wraps up Monday with the final.

The Windsor Lancers will open against the No. 5 Acadia Axewomen (the AUS champions) in quarter-final action in a game at 7 p.m.

Saturday’s other quarter-finals will see UBC face McGill, Saskatchewan battle Ottawa and Regina play Calgary.

SSN Canada will have live webcasts of all games, while Shaw Television will televise the two championship semi-finals and the gold-medal game. The semifinals and final game will also be aired on NBA TV Canada.