Women's basketball top 10 tracker: More western (not Western) matchups to anticipate

The coaches' rankings are in brackets. Notable games this week included Calgary at Victoria and UBC. No upsets so far, with two more Top 10 teams in action on Sunday. We also saw Kelsey Hodgson outscore every other AUS player since 1977.

1. Saskatchewan (3): Beat Fraser Valley by a lot on Friday, clinching their division in the process. Jana Spindler led with 12 points; Kim Tulloch had 11 of her own and 11 rebounds. Tulloch was a board away from a double-double Saturday night as the U of S won 82-56 against the WolfPack. She led the team with 16; Kara Lackie added 11 in just 16 minutes.

2. Windsor (2): Won on Wednesday, their 13th in a row. 89 points is a pretty high total; 21 of those came from Alisa Wulff. Iva Peklova added 14 of her own to go along with eight boards. They played at Waterloo on Saturday and came away with a 76-64 win, but the score doesn't tell the whole story. Well, the boxscore can't, because it's wrong--the fourth quarter is listed as the first quarter, annoyingly--but Waterloo shot the lights out to start and had a seven-ish point lead at the half and a 59-58 lead after three when the Lancers started to wake up. Once that happened, the Warriors couldn't keep up defensively, and strong second halves from Dranadia Roc and Peklova put the game away.

3. Simon Fraser (1): Home-and-home with Trinity (20th in RPI) and won both. Robyn Buna went off for 51 in her 53 combined minutes over the two games.

4. Alberta (5): Nearly doubled up on the WolfPack, holding them to single digits in all but the first quarter. Then on Saturday night against UFV, Kristin Jarock led with 22 in 24 minutes as Alberta won 66-49.

Only 125 player-minutes (instead of 200) are recorded for both teams in Friday's game, and it's easy to guess why after seeing the play-by-play for the first half. Apparently nobody scored or took a shot or turned the ball over for the first five minutes of the game--raising the interesting question of what they were doing all that time--then in the second quarter, they chose to count down from 10 minutes using random numbers ("6:59...2:59...7:10...2:26...8:17..."). Just another day in the CIS.

5. Victoria (6): A sweep over Calgary and Lethbridge at home would cement the Vikes' second-place standing in the Pacific division, behind powerhouse SFU. Kayla Dykstra picked up 24 points and 15 boards on Friday against the Dinos in a 65-52; then nearly replicated that against Lethbridge on Saturday: 25 and 14, hitting 11 of 16 from the field. UVic won 78-51.

t-6. Regina (4): Hosting two against the University of Manitoba, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. My computer tells me "Cougars by 12" and they won the first by 18 with, interestingly, nobody seeing more than 25 minutes on the floor (and only two playing half the game). Gabrielle Gheyssen led the team with 12 points in her 14 minutes.

t-6. Memorial (7): Their Sunday game, the second at home against UPEI this weekend, was originally scheduled for 9:30 in the morning after a 6 pm tipoff on Saturday. This was changed, for the good of all involved. Looks like Saturday was a back-and-forth one, with the Sea-Hawks coming out on top 77-73. 17 points, 9 rebounds for Victoria Thistle.

8. Laval (NR): Home-and-home with the Bishop's Gaiters. Game 1 at Laval saw the Rouge et Or win 63-57 despite not scoring any points in any of the quarters, or so the boxscore would have you believe. Nobody particularly stood out in that game, but they did have 13 days off so it's understandable. Game 2 went to Bishop's, literally and figuratively, as the home team won by 5 or 6 points in both games. A rarer double-double for Chanelle St-Amour, who added 10 assists to her 16 points. As far as I can tell, that's happened just four times this year and not since November, whereas four players have done the same for points and rebounds since Wednesday.

Laval has also recruited yet another player from nearby Cégep de Sainte-Foy. Currently, seven former Dyamiques are on the Rouge et Or roster, including Marie-Michelle Genois. Marie-Pascale Nadeau is expected to join the team next fall.

9. Toronto (NR): It's the Kingston trip for the Varsity Blues, who are likely to win against Queen's as well as RMC. Not much to say about their win over RMC: Alaine Hutton, Tara Kinnear, and Nicki Schutz all netted 15. They were up by 13 after three, if one can believe the boxscore, against the Gaels on Saturday, and that cushion helped them win by seven as Queen's tallied 20 in the fourth. 25 points for Kinnear.

10. Dalhousie (11): Have only one game scheduled, at home against Acadia. (According to the CIS website, they play at Guelph next Tuesday. That's a neat trick.) All I can tell you is they won that game by 30, because there are no stats listed, two days later.

Other teams in the CIS top 10: Winnipeg (24th in RPI), Calgary (16), and Cape Breton (14). The Dinos are looking to reach .500, but couldn't win against UBC or UVic. From this corner, Winnipeg really isn't the eighth-best team in the country, and they had two thankless games this weekend against Brandon.

The Capers squeaked by StFX on Wednesday--the more noteworthy stuff happened in the men's game--and then Kelsey Hodgson exploded on Saturday: 46 points, 9 three-balls on 12 shots, 7 of 7 from the line, six boards, and a steal. It's far and away the best individual performance by anyone this year. Granted, she did it against UNB, but the AUS' John Keefe by way of Chad Lucas tells us it's a 33-year record down east.
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