Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

One of two ties in the OUA to end the regular season paired the Windsor Lancers with the Western Mustangs, and Western not having the tiebreaker bumped them down to the 11 seed. Now the Mustangs will travel into Toronto to see the TMU Bold in the first round of the OUA Critelli Cup. TMU finished 16-6, one game back of division leading Brock and as the 6 seed for the OUA playoffs.

Western won the regular season matchup with TMU by a score of 64-54, behind 21 points from MacKeely Shantz, 12 from Rookie of the Year candidate Paris Alexander, and 12 from Emily Capretta. Though the usual three led the Mustangs statistically, it was the team effort defensively which pushed them over the top, and that’s what’s going to be needed if Western wants to get another victory over TMU.

Western got out rebounded 36-26 against TMU, but won the steals 9-3, creating transition opportunities for players like MacKeely and Emily to run the floor. Going into this matchup, Western will need better results on the glass to keep specifically Kaillie Hall and Haley Fedick from attacking the offensive glass, getting second chance points or getting trips to the foul line.

In Western’s game against Waterloo in the last weekend of the regular season, Western closed the game out by crashing the offensive glass with 3 players on most shots, and bringing that effort all game against TMU to deny put backs will be really important to keep Western in front or halt a TMU run.

For TMU, the difference is going to be in their record setter, Hailey Franco-DeRyck. Hailey went scoreless in their loss to Western, but contributed 16 rebounds and 4 assists. How she is able to attack the glass and set up opportunities for kick out threes for Catrina Garvey and Jayme Foreman will be a big tell for how successful TMU will be.

We all know about how Catrina is able to score the ball, and the aggression that Kaillie Hall plays with going for rebounds and fighting her way to the rim, but Hailey’s offensive performance both as a paint facilitator and scorer will help TMU battle against Paris Alexander and Morgan Tamminga who are both big pieces of Western’s game plan.

TMU had a great first half of the season pushing to a 10-1 record, and an up and down second half leading to their 16-6 record. Western started 4-6 and pushed to 11-11 and a playoff spot. Now they both start at an even slate again, with a win-or-go-home environment, and the Brock Badgers awaiting whoever advances to the quarterfinal.