Following a close loss to the University of Ottawa on Saturday, the T-Birds men's basketball team took to the court again Sunday to face the undefeated Memorial University Seahawks. As the last game of the UBC Invitational, this was the last time the new Doug Mitchell Sports Centre court will be used until the 2016 CIS Final 8.
UBC won the tip and scored straight away on a strange play in which Memorial’s Noel Moffatt laid it in for UBC after a Conor Morgan miss. The T-Birds then got off to a quick 20-11 lead over the Seahawks courtesy of six straight points from David Wagner and a couple of threes from rookie Taylor Browne. But Memorial returned with two three-pointers of their own from Vasilije Curcic and a crossover step-back three from Javan Babovic. The Seahawks ended the quarter trailing by just three.
Memorial tied the game early at 25 in the second, but thanks to eight points from Conor Morgan and solid defence from Browne, UBC went for 15 unanswered points. Browne also racked up three steals and another three-pointer in the second. Following that, both teams then traded baskets including a posterizing dunk from Jordan Jensen-Whyte to finish up with UBC ahead 51-39 at the half.
Beginning the third, Wagner hit four straight points during a 7-0 UBC run to extend their lead to 19. However, Memorial’s Curcic wouldn’t let his team die as he went to the line three times in a row starting a Memorial run that cut their deficit to just eight. Wagner responded by spinning out of double-teams and triple-teams to put up 11 of his team high of 21 in the quarter. And new T-Bird Phil Jalalpoor ended the third by sinking a three from eight feet behind the line at the buzzer to give UBC a 72-58 lead.
Jensen-Whyte started off the final period strong hitting a layup just seconds in — but that was when Memorial started their comeback.
Memorial followed with a three and two foul shots. Shortly after that, the Seahawks' Daniel Gordon swatted Jensen-Whyte on a defensive play, took it to the other end and converted on a mid-range jumper. Wagner halted Memorial's momentum briefly by posting up a quick two, but then Gordon came right back driving into the lane, euro-stepping around two UBC defenders and laying it in to cut UBC’s lead to nine.
After a UBC turnover, Memorial returned with a layup followed by another UBC turnover. Another layup by Gordon then cut UBC’s lead to just five with two minutes left. But that’s as close as Memorial would get as the teams proceeded to trade baskets finishing with UBC on top 88-81.
David Wagner — who leads UBC in points, rebounds and blocks Sunday — felt the weekend was a success overall.
"This is the first time that we’ve really played together,” said Wagner. “We got a lot of the jitters out of the way. A lot of the stuff we’re trying to grind out right now. We’ve got to work on executing a lot of things, but overall, we really worked our butts off this weekend.”
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