A scorching start powered the University of the Fraser Valley men's basketball team to its eighth straight win, 100-91 on the road Friday over the Thompson Rivers WolfPack.
Parm Bains, Canada West's third-leading scorer coming in, lit up the WolfPack for 16 points – including four three-pointers – in the first quarter, and the Cascades stretched the lead as high as 22 points in the second.
The WolfPack stuck with it behind some hot shooting of their own – they hit 18 triples as a team – and battled back in the second half to cut the deficit to a single point. The Cascades, though, got a series of clutch plays over the final three minutes of regulation, hitting the 100-point mark for the third time this season.
The two teams emerge from Friday's action with matching 11-6 records, and they wrap up the weekend series Saturday evening in Kamloops (7 p.m.,
CanadaWest.tv presented by Co-op).
"We knew they weren't going to roll over," Cascades head coach
Adam Friesen said afterward. "We knew they were going to battle to the end, and that they did. In that third quarter, they seemed to hit every shot they took. They made the game really interesting, and I was proud of our guys for their response."
Bains was unstoppable in the first quarter – Canada West's most prolific three-point shooter connected four times from beyond the arc, and the visitors led 33-23 after 10 minutes.
It was more of the same in the second – with TRU's defensive attention fixated on Bains,
Jaskarn Bajwa scored eight straight UFV points in one stretch, and the lead ballooned to 55-33. The WolfPack responded with a 9-2 surge, but with TRU holding for last shot,
Vick Toor snuck into the passing lane for a steal and subsequent breakaway layup to make it 59-42 at halftime.
The third quarter, though, belonged to the hosts – they outscored the Cascades 34-18 in the frame, drawing to within 77-76 heading to the fourth.
The WolfPack would grab their first lead of the night on Anton Bilous's trey with four and a half minutes left in regulation, but the Cascades ended the game on an 11-1 run. Bains and Toor scored four points apiece during that decisive stretch, and
Sukhjot Bains's tough layup through contact with 40 seconds left was the dagger.
"We did a lot of things pretty well today, but when we made a mistake, they seemed to make us pay every time," Friesen marveled. "But as a group, we really wanted it. We stayed aggressive, and when it comes down to it, you have to make some plays and we did that."
Parm Bains added eight assists to his game-high point total, Toor racked up 21 points, and
Sukhjot Bains had a double-double (19 points, 10 rebounds) to spark a dominant effort on the boards which saw UFV out-rebound the WolfPack 46-30.
Sukhraj Bains (13) and Bajwa (10) also scored in double figures.
Bilous (25 points, 7-for-13 from three) led TRU's perimeter assault, Joe Davis scored 21, and Tyus De Vries poured in 20 off the bench.
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