Women’s basketball knocks out St. FX

Guard Keisha Brown helped Dal hold St. FX to a paltry 42 pts. | Photo by Alice Hebb

Sometimes all you need is some home cooking.

Dalhousie’s women’s basketball team proved that was the case Jan. 29 with a shellacking of the visiting St. FX X-Women, 71 – 42.

The win ends a two-game slide for the Tigers, with both losses on the road against Acadia and Saint Mary’s (ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the league, respectively). The bounce back win improves the Tigers’ home record to 4 – 1, and an overall AUS record of fifth-place. The loss drops St. FX to seventh in the league, ahead of only UPEI.

The X-Women’s 42 points stands as the lowest scoring effort an AUS team has had all season.

For a game that started slowly, it managed to get out of hand almost imperceptibly. A mere five points in total was scored in the first four minutes, and the game seemed doomed to be plagued by sloppy offence. Both teams, however, soon got their sea legs, turning the game into a close contest, albeit for the briefest of moments. After pushing the Tigers to a 13 – 11 score with three minutes left in the first quarter, the X-Women were never that close again. In fact, Dal never relinquished the nine-point lead they achieved by the end of the first quarter of 23 – 14.

The second quarter saw poor shooting from both teams, but the home side managed to increase their lead to 13 points, 37 – 24.

The lone bright spot in the quarter was the play of St. FX’s player of the game, second-year guard Kiley DeLong, who scored six of her team-high nine points in the frame. She was also a perfect 4-for-4 from the field. Yes, you read that correctly: DeLong’s nine points led her team. The Tigers’ suffocating defence did not allow a single double-digit scorer for the opposing squad.

As a team, the X-Women shot a paltry 28 per cent from the floor, demonstrated by making only six field goals in the entire second half. The Tigers took advantage of their opponents’ shoddy shooting, though not as easily as the final score would suggest. Dal shot only 35 per cent from the field themselves, a mark even lower than their 37 per cent season average, which ranks them at the bottom of the league.

But on Sunday, it did not matter. The Tigers gave just enough to win, led by second-year guard Courtney Thompson, their player of the game, and her 16 points. Also contributing to the commanding victory was third-year forward Anna von Maltzhan, who added 11 points and 15 rebounds to continue her league domination of the glass.

The Tigers have a sole opponent this weekend and it is the basement-dwelling UPEI Panthers. The Feb. 4 match at 6 p.m. takes place in Charlottetown.