With the homestretch of the Canada West basketball season upon us, somebody else not named Madison Landry, Maria Mongomo or Vasiliki Louka needed to step up for the UNBC Timberolves.
The help came in the form of second-year Russian born player Alina Shakirova who came through with a career-best 18-point performance to lead the T-Wolves to a convincing 78-55 victory over the TRU Wolfpack on Friday from the Northern Sport Centre.
“We started really strong in the third quarter with some really good defense and when we play as a team it creates a lot of confidence to every player and my teammates were helping me with taking some good shots and it’s just something I had to do.”
With this being the first game since the Christmas break, it was noticeable early on UNBC was suffering from a bad case of turkey legs leading by a score of 17-14 after the first quarter.
However, once the hurdle was cleared, the Timberwolves imposed their will on the Wolfpack outscoring 61-41 the rest of the way including a 25-7 stretch in the third quarter.
“I think the rust played a big role early on because we hadn’t played for a month and everybody was home and we didn’t see each other for weeks and we started to play strong again after a while so we needed to get this feeling and start strong,” said Shakirova.
UNBC improves to 7-4 on the season and snap a four-game losing streak in the process.
As impressive as 23-point victory may look on paper, Shakirova states they can’t underestimate TRU in any way during the second half of the double header.
“Every game is a new game and we cannot think about the fact we won yesterday, it’s a new game and we start zero-zero and we know we need to put in more effort because we know this team is really strong and they’ll want to come out hard after a loss because they really need points.”
The men’s game turned out to be a post-holiday gem as the Timberwolves outlasted the Wolfpack 90-81.
UNBC trailed by as many as eleven points in the second quarter but some timely shooting from Jovan Leamy and Vova Pluzhnikov proved to be the difference in the fourth quarter as TRU was outscored by a margin of 31-16.
Leamy felt he was in a groove for most of the night, which helped spark the comeback.
“I feel like I can make every shot, why take it if you don’t think you can make it right? My confidence always has to be at one hundred in order for this team to be successful and that’s not even my approach, that’s everybody’s approach on the team and that’s the only way were going to be successful.”
Both Leamy and Pluzhnikov recorded 25 and 24 points respectively as the T-Wolves improve to 7-4.
The second half of each doubleheader continues tonight at 5 and 7 PM from the Northern Sports Centre.