Five to Ponder: January in the OUA; must be division matchup time

Here are five matchups to watch. This will also serve as an open discussion thread for the weekend.

1. Windsor 2 at Guelph 1, Windsor at Brock (women's hockey)
Sunday at 3:15pm ET

Last year's top goalie and a bunch of players named Candace will travel to try to pick up some ground on these teams in front of them. The Lancers won the first game, 2-1, with all three goals coming in the third (and the eventual winner being a shorthanded goal, ouch).


2. Manitoba 5-2 at Saskatchewan 3-5 (men's hockey)

Our Evan Daum previewed this series, and it turned out to be a split. Friday's game "mirrored" a recent game that hockey fans might remember. U of S head coach Dave Adolph mused that a three-goal lead might be the worst lead in hockey--not to nitpick, but isn't a one-goal lead always the worst lead?--as his Huskies went up 3-0 but lost 5-3. Saturday, the Huskies won 5-2 (4-2 with an empty-netter) after, this time, not giving up a three-goal lead.


3. Laurier 91-84 at Lakehead 82-90 (men's basketball)

The men's hoops matchup of the week. It's been "almost two months" since Lakehead last played at home, and they're probably hoping their second game back goes better than the first. Here are the highlights; you can see a number of defensive breakdowns (54 second-half points), and that's exactly what coach Scott Morrison points out in the postgame release. Big win for Laurier; Max Allin had 21 on 12 shots and added ten assists. They went at it again Saturday, and for a while it looked like more trouble for the Great Group of Dudes, but a second-half rally overcame the 56 (!) first-half points they surrendered.


4. Laurier 3 at RMC 0 (women's volleyball)

While I haven't forgot about this Chase For The Fourth Seed, it will not be easy for RMC to attain. They lost 25-21, 25-17, and 25-16. Next up for RMC on their yet-to-be-officially-nicknamed quest: Windsor, on the road on Saturday.


5. Lakehead 1-1 at Western 3-4 (men's hockey)

Not a living soul, aside from Lakehead themselves, appears to have previewed this series, but it should be a good one. Turns out it was good for Western in terms of points (4, or 8 if you want to count that way) but bad in terms of players injured and out for eight months (1). Aaron Snow went into the boards and came away with two major ligaments torn in his knee. Apparently Friday's was a chippy game that the officials let get out of hand, not that either coach is saying so on the record. Saturday's game sounds like an easy win, but the 0-for-7 on the powerplay might be a worry in the 4-1 Western win.


Honourable mention: SMU at UNB, otherwise described by Bill McLean as Colley vs. Colbourne; UPEI at UNB (men's hockey).
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5 comments:

  1. you could probably say that BOTH the womens and mens basketball at Lakehead is going to be good this weekend

    Womens Laurier (8-2), Lakehead (7-3)
    Mens Laurier (7-3), Lakehead (8-2)

    it is not too often you will see a doubleheader between team so close to each other

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  2. I was working the UNB @ Moncton hockey game, where the V-Reds shutout streak ended, but they got their power play uncorked with 3 PP goals in 7-4 win.

    Back in Freddy Beach at the basketball games, UNB won 84-59 in the women's match. In the head to head battle of the scoring leaders SMU's Justine Colley had 22 points while UNB rookie Claire Colborne was held to 16 points. Four V-Reds were in double figures: Leah Corby lead UNB with 20 points, older sister Megan had 15, Colborne's 16 and Amanda Sharpe had 10.

    The men's game saw the improving V-Reds come up one basket short in losing 65-63 to the Huskies. What's up with the Huskies this year?

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  3. Steve Betts and I had the Tigers/Huskies hockey game on ssncanada and the Tigers did not look good at all. Serious lack of effort and intensity and Saint Mary's had no problems winning 5-0. Tigers have lost 4 in a row and been outscored 23-4 in the process.

    Huskies basketball team are going thru growing pains. They lost some outstanding seniors and are trying to gel on the fly. Despite their struggles they still look like they'll finish 4th or 5th in the standings and Ross Quackenbush's teams always play their best basketball down the stretch.

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  4. "Big win for Laurier" is kind of understating it, actually - after Friday's games, they're now 4th nationwide in RPI. I doubt they'll get much higher even if they sweep the GGODs - CBU, UBC, and Carleton (in reverse) order are far enough ahead to make that a difficult task.

    But we're starting to see some separation in that "tough" OUA West. Check out the RPI:

    4 WLU
    8 Windsor
    10 Lakehead
    12 McMaster
    ..
    23 Brock
    24 Guelph
    29 Waterloo
    31 Western

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  5. Dramatic hockey game in Fredericton tonight. It took 55 UNB shots before the V-Reds won it 2-1 at 8:11 of the overtime period over UPEI. Taylor Procyshen with the winner on a two-on-one rush with new recruit Marc-Antoine Desnoyer. Desnoyer also hit a post in the OT. The Panthers managed 18 shots in game, and had an early lead when Matt Brenton scored shorthanded at 1:29 of first period. The last half of the game saw a lot of rope-a-dope from UPEI as they played the neutral zone trap. But hard to do that in a ten minute 4-on-4 overtime, that started out as a 3-on-3 due to a penalty on each team. Oh, and there were 3232 fans at the Aitken University Centre getting their money's worth.

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