The University of the Fraser Valley men's basketball team made a spirited fourth-quarter push, but the UBC Thunderbirds fended them off for a 91-82 victory at War Memorial Gym on Friday evening.
In a grind-it-out game with little pace or flow – the two teams combined for 64 free throws on the night – it was the Thunderbirds (14-2) earning their Canada West-leading 14th win of the campaign. The Cascades, third in the West Division, fell to 9-6.
The UFV squad continues its road trip with a Saturday date with the Victoria Vikes (5 p.m., CanadaWest.tv presented by Co-op).
"We're at our best when the ball is flying and we're getting up and down the floor," Cascades head coach
Joe Enevoldson noted afterward. "A good defensive basketball team can grind it out, slow you down and limit you in transition, and UBC did that tonight. We've got to do a better job of hitting shots down the stretch."
The Thunderbirds clawed out an early advantage, putting together a 13-2 run in the first quarter headlined by three-pointers from Grant Audu and Triston Matthews. That gave them a 23-12 lead, and the hosts found themselves up 27-19 at the quarter pole.
The Cascades hung tough in the second quarter in large part due to the play of
Zubair Seyed, who scored 11 points in the frame.
Kyle Claggett chipped in with back-to-back buckets just before halftime, and the UBC lead was 50-42 at the break.
The Thunderbirds broke the game open with a 10-0 run midway through the third quarter, with Audu scoring four points during that surge.
The Cascades trailed by as many as 19, but were able to piece together a comeback as they tightened things up defensively in the fourth quarter. They limited UBC to 2-of-17 shooting from the field in the fourth, and were able to cut the deficit to single digits, but they weren't able to get close enough to make the T-Birds truly sweat down the stretch.
"I thought the ball was sticky at times, and our spacing wasn't great," said Enevoldson, whose squad shot just 35.1 per cent from the field on the night, including 7-of-27 from three-point range. "I thought it was a really choppy game – they really grinded with us and we really grinded with them, and we were fortunate to cut it to nine (in the fourth).
"Defensively, we didn't finish possessions off. Guys got to their dominant hand too much, and in the first half, our ball-screen coverage was porous to say the least. And then our bigs (
Aidan Wilson and
Dario Lopez) got into some foul trouble. Our attention to detail and scouting reports needs to be dialed in, especially against the top teams down the stretch here."
Seyed's 22 points were a game-high, and he added 10 rebounds.
Jamar Ergas scored 14 points, and Wilson and
Vick Toor had nine points apiece.
UBC's Sukhman Sandhu went a perfect 12-for-12 from the free throw line on his way to 21 points, Audu scored 18, and James Woods chipped in with 15.