The magic of Maria Mongomo was on full display at the Northern Sport Centre where she helped will the UNBC Timberwolves to a thrilling 90-82 victory against the Manitoba Bisons.
A 25-point, 17-rebound performance helped improve the T-Wolves to a 9-5 record on the Shoot for the Cure night on Saturday.
The fourth-year player out of Las Palmas, Spain was part of the big-three, which also included Madison Landry, and Vasiliki Louka who all recorded 20 point efforts.
Louka, who committed 10 turnovers in Friday’s 76-69 loss to Manitoba, played a much cleaner game only turning the ball over three times and went 9-for-18 on field goals to go along with 10 boards.
“We didn’t want to lose the game again similar to what happened last night (Friday). We focused on defence and we tried to stop a couple of their key players and it worked.”
After carrying a 45-36 lead at halftime, the impressive shooting of the Bisons came to life giving UNBC all they could handle as Manitoba outscored the Timberwolves 26-15 in the third quarter to find themselves 62-60 heading into the final ten minutes.
From there, the Timberwolves showed some resolve and put it into another gear scoring 30 points foiling the efforts of Taylor Randall and Emma Thompson who recored 10-three pointers in defeat for the visitors.
“Manitoba’s record doesn’t show how good they are. They’re a pretty good team that plays good defence, they are a tough team and it was tough for us to go to the basket and made it really difficult to score.”
UNBC outscored the Bisons in the paint 46-24 and went 34-for-62 field goals as a team.
The women’s basketball team went 3-1 on a four-game homestand and will play Alberta next weekend in Edmonton.
In men’s action, the Timberwolves lost another close shave to Manitoba 69-65, dropping to 7-7 on the season.
UNBC had a cold night shooting the ball making only 22 field goals on 72 attempts.
The lone offensive bright spot was Anthony Hokanson who had a good night offensively from the bench with 14.
The fourth-year product out of Vancouver says losing to close decisions is a tough pill to swallow.
“It’s always tough when you lose two at home, you never want to let down the home fans and we have been struggling with our offence so we have some stuff to work on but we can hang our hats that we had a good defensive weekend but we really need to figure out our offense.”
The Timberwolves also play the Golden Bears in Edmonton next weekend, kicking off a four-game road swing.
Both varsity basketball teams are seventh in the Canada West standings.