Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

The Ottawa Gee-Gees and Queen’s Gaels are 5-5 in their games over the past 5 seasons. They’ve only met 3 times in the playoffs, twice dating back to 2013, but coming from the same division they are very familiar with each other, and they meet in the OUA quarterfinals. Let’s breakdown the approach for both sides.

The Gee-Gees come in as the two seed for this matchup after a great season that put them 19-3. They’re 2-0 vs the Gaels this season, each game decided by less than 10 points. Going into this higher stakes meeting, the x-factor for the Gee-Gees is their post player, Emily Payne. The Gee-Gees are a very deep team offensively and Natsuki Szczokin and Allie McCarthy provide a great steady contribution from outside, but to combat what the Gaels will do to get the ball out of Natsuki’s hands, they’ll need to be able to work inside out and feed the ball inside for some possessions.

Natsuki controls a lot of what the Gee-Gees do on offence, but when the ball is out of her hand, the Gee-Gees need to be able to work through Queen’s defensive pressure, and they’ll need to work the paint to not just facilitate but score. The matchup of Emily and Mikayla McFarlane is very important for Ottawa and how they’ll be able to execute.

Defensively the Gee-Gees should try to keep the ball out of Brooke Hussey’s hands. Brooke is a very creative guard who can finish and find ways to distribute for others, and keeping her controlled is vital for the Gee-Gees success. Not switching screens, pressuring in the half court to force the ball into someone else’s hands, limiting the impact of the player who is the favourite to win rookie of the year will make everyone else’s job easier defending the Gaels offence.

For Queen’s, they have much of the same feel to me offensively as Ottawa in that Mikayla McFarlane is going to be a big piece of their success. Facilitating through paint touches helps catch and shoot guards like Isabella Gaudet, and helps Brooke play off the catch. The Gaels will want to work off-ball movement as much as they can to create openings for drives, and run the ball through Mikayla and Katrina Renon wherever possible. Where Ottawa can get got is in attacking guards, and Queen’s opening up that space by pulling eyes towards the paint is vital.

Defensively, Queen’s focus has to be on denying passes outside. Natsuki gets into the paint and that’s where she finds threes for Allie or opportunities for other starters. Knowing when she picks up her dribble that those outlets have to be taken away as much as possible will steer Ottawa towards more of a perimeter game which helps out the Gaels defence.

Two of the province’s top teams over the past meet again on Saturday.