THUNDER BAY – Sports – The Lakehead University Thunderwolves men’s basketball team completed a weekend sweep of the Western Mustangs, winning 87-66 on Saturday evening. The Lakehead Thunderwolves had the opposite start on Saturday night as they did on Friday as Western opened up the game with an 8-1 run and won the 1st quarter 21-17. In the second quarter Lakehead focused its defense and held the Mustangs to 11 points and a Ryan Thomson buzzer beater put the ‘Wolves up 4 at the half; 36-32.
Western was without starting guard Ryan Barbeau, who was red hot on Friday evening, scoring 26 points, but was in street clothes on Saturday evening for undisclosed reasons. Also not dressed on Saturday was Quinn Henderson. Although Mustangs forward Peter Scholtes stepped up in a big way scoring a game-high 35 points, it was all for not as the Pack pulled away in the third quarter and contained a feisty Mustangs team down the stretch to seal the victory.
Lakehead’s top scorer was Venzal Russell with 25 points, 4 assist, 4 rebounds and 3 steals. Russell dazzled the Thunderdome crowd with a plethora of drives to the basket at break neck speed, twisting and turning between defenders and finishing with both hands on either side of the hoop with just the right amount of ‘English’ on the ball, as they say. Other leading wolves were Joe Jones with 16 points in 23 minutes, and Greg Carter with 13 points in 20 minutes of floor time.
Coach Scott Morrison said, “It was not our prettiest effort but it was good to see some guys like Russell, King and Jones have good games after struggling a bit since the break. Western’s team really stepped up in the absence of two of their main guys and of course Scholtes was possibly the best player on the court offensively over 80 minutes this weekend. This week in practice we will be working on our man defense discipline as well as looking to create some more opportunities on the glass before we travel to Waterloo to take on the hottest team in the OUA West right now in Laurier.”
Stay tuned for webcasting links for next weekend’s games @ Laurier.