Womenâ??s basketball first place in the AUS
The Varsity Reds women’s basketball head coach Jeff Speedy believes that the AUS is seven-deep this year.
That being said they have only suffered one loss and in the last two games his team beat two of these seven teams, Dalhousie and Acadia by 48 and 16 respectively and dropped 90-plus points on each to improve to a conference best 5-1.
“To come into this gym you better be ready to put the ball in the basket because it’s going to take a lot to beat us here,” said Speedy.
Less than two-and-a-half minutes into the game against the Tigers, the Reds were up 13-0, drilled three three-pointers and forced three turnovers. After one quarter UNB was up 37-7, forced 11 turnovers and made five of six three-pointers.
The V-Reds kept things rolling as they went on to a 97-49 victory over the Tigers. “I think we really shocked them with our outside shooting and they took off their zone which has kind of been their bread and butter on defence and then we just got rolling,” said Speedy after the game.
Rookie Claire Colborne continued to score in bunches as she had 22 points, four assists and four rebounds and Amanda Sharpe dominated in the post as she led the team with 29 points on 57.9% shooting, 11 rebounds, three steals and two blocks against Dalhousie.
“My team did such a good job of getting me the ball whenever I was open as soon as I was open,” said Sharpe. “It just made my moves easier to do because they got me the ball so quickly.”
The Reds kept up the scoring spree the next night against the Axewomen. UNB started the game on a 19-5 run and led 34-19 after the first.
The team scored on fast breaks, in the post and from beyond the arc, and took a 56-36 lead to the locker room at half.
The lead got as low as seven for UNB, but in the fourth quarter, Sharpe positioned herself on the post and as she got the ball Colborne’s woman doubled the post and she quickly passed to the open Colborne for the three and AUS leading scorer made no mistake. Acadia turned the ball over the next possession which lead to another basket and the result was sealed.
UNB walked away with their fourth straight win, 93-77 over the Axewomen.
“I thought we took Acadia’s run today and dealt with it really well and kept our composure and extended our lead,” said Speedy. “I’m really happy with that and obviously really happy with the record.”
“But I thought we really improved on a big area of weakness and that is taking that punch and staggering.”
“Definitely happy with the offence,” said guard Megan Corby. “We tried to play a fast-pace game, we push the ball. We know other teams aren’t going to be able to keep up with us, we train that hard.”
With no league games until after the New Year, the Varsity Reds go into the break in first place in the AUS. Speedy is happy with where the team is but is still looking at the big picture.
“It was a fairly easy part of our schedule,” said Speedy. “We had four home games, our only road games was against a team that didn’t win a game last year (UPEI) so it was a fairly easy part of our schedule so to speak.”
Even with great back-to-back offensive outputs, Speedy still prefers to have the break now than have this streak continue.
“We’re ready for a break for sure. We actually started late August because we played those two games against Maine at the end of August. We’ve been going for a long time. It’ll be nice to have a break and not beat each other up for a couple of hours a day. It’s a long season so we’ll recharge and be ready to go in the New Year.”