KINGSTON – Sports – The Lakehead University men’s basketball team came out of the gate without shaking the dust off their boots on Friday evening. Luckily they found their wits at halftime, cruising to a 32-point win, 84 52 over Queen’s.
Lakehead survived a stagnant first half of offence to pull away from Queens. Trailing by 1 (28-27) at the half, LU was 0-10 from 3 point land in the first 20 minutes. The second half was a different story as Ryan Thomson broke the ice with an early 3 and greg Carter turned up the heat on Queen’s ball handlers to the tune of 5 steals.
The Wolves would outscore Queens 29-9 in the deciding third quarter and then 28-15 in the 4th.
Lakehead’s top scorer was Ben Johnson with 22 points (5-9 from three) and 6 rebounds. Three other T-Wolves hit double digits in points; Venzal Russell (17) Greg Carter (14) and Nathan ‘Nasty Nate’ Wainwright (10).
The Golden Gaels were led by Ryan Golden with 12 points, while Mackenzie Simpson had 10 points and 6 boards.
Coach Scott Morrison said, “It was a slow start offensively for us as we had a tough time with Queen’s style of defence which led to us forcing on O and not moving the ball. Second half we did a better job kicking off our penetration and were able to knock down some outside shots which is always going to be a key for us on offence. I thought we did a decent job defending the Gaels’ open concept offence though they did do a number on us in the rebounding category. We have to re-group and bring the confidence and execution from the second half tonight for 40 minutes tomorrow afternoon.”
The men face RMC tomorrow afternoon at 4 pm.