Western Gazette Article on Mustang's Final Game

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Ryan Barbeau

March 4, 2011


By Daniel Da Silva Western Gazette

Awful fourth quarter ends Western’s season early

After playing the Lakehead Thunderwolves twice in the final weekend of the regular season, Marcus Barnett and the men’s basketball team felt they had the perfect plan to pull off an upset last Saturday.

“We learned a lot about their individual personnel after playing them twice. I was guarding their starting point guard Greg Carter. I learned he couldn’t shoot, so I double–teamed other players and I didn’t even guard Carter. He went 1-10 from the field [on Saturday],” Barnett said

It worked for three quarters, as the Mustangs went into the fourth down by a single point. Yet the Thunderwolves managed to pull away in the final stanza and knock out the Mustangs 63-49.

So what happened?

“Their coach noticed [Carter] was hurting their team and he was benched the entire fourth quarter,” Barnett said. “It made us play them honestly and they were able to execute their offence more proficiently.”

It was a stark change for the Mustangs who were strong defensively all game. In the first quarter, they managed to accomplish the rare feat of scoring only four points, yet were within striking distance of the favoured Thunderwolves.

“We had a terrible first quarter offensively. Our defence kept us in the game. We felt we had to keep up the defence and then some shots will fall if we execute a little better on the offensive end,” Mustangs head coach Brad Campbell said.

The defence definitely held Western in, holding Lakehead — who normally average 75 points per game — to only 22 by the half. Though for Barnett, this was a pretty mundane accomplishment.

“Lakehead is a very easy team to defend because they don’t have one particular guy who can explode for points. They have a lot of one dimensional players who can only do certain things,” Barnett said.

But the Mustangs simply couldn’t get it going at the other end of the floor. Throughout the game, they only shot 28.1 per cent and turned the ball over 14 times. Andrew Wedemire and Quinn Henderson were the only two who performed offensively, both hitting at over 40 per cent and scoring 14 and 13 points respectively.

Yet the Mustangs remained in the game until the fourth quarter. But when Carter was replaced, Lakehead stars Jamie Searle and Yoosrie Salhia stepped up. Searle put up 14 points and 14 rebounds in 38 minutes while Salhia led all scorers with 19.

“Searle has been their big shot maker. He seems to make big shots for them when it counts,” Campbell said.

“Salhia is hard to stop because he is strong and physical inside. That’s hard to take away with our size and strength,” Barnett added.

For Barnett, Wedemire and Brett Lawrence, the loss was a bitter pill to swallow as it effectively ended their careers in purple and white.

“But we never really met our true potential [this year]. I will probably always wonder how we would have been as a team if we had Adam [Jespersen] and Garrett [Olexiuk] healthy for the entire season,” Barnett said.

Despite those big losses, the Mustangs still have a lot to look forward to next year according to coach Campbell.

“We have a bunch of young pieces coming along, in particular two rookies, Quinn Henderson and Peter Scholtes, who started a lot for us. Due to injuries, they wound up getting a lot of time, which is fantastic for their development,” he said. “If we can get our players healthy, we will have a solid core to build around next year.”