Dario Lopez had a game-high 27 points and
Takeshi Croke had 10 assists to finish the regular season as the conference leader in assists, but the UFV Cascades dropped an 86-77 result to the Trinity Western Spartans on Saturday in Abbotsford.
The Cascades finish the regular season with a 9-11 record, while the Spartans jump to 12-8. Both teams will now look ahead to the Canada West playoffs beginning next week.
How it happened:
The Spartans jumped ahead early, outscoring the Cascades 28-19 in the opening quarter, but 11 second quarter points from Lopez helped UFV right the ship before the break.
The Cascades opened the third on a 13-4 run, that included back-to-back threes from
Jake Willemsen and
Ismael Hernandez, to take a one-point lead. The teams would trade scores to find themselves even at 69 with just over three minutes left in the fourth, but and 11-0 run from TWU in the following 2:30 would put the game out of reach.
Notable:
Lopez led all players with 27 points and 11 rebounds, while chipping in four assists, three steals and a block. Hernandez chipped in 25 points and six boards for UFV.
Croke picked up 10 assists to finish the regular season leading Canada West. That also puts him at 5.4 assists per game, a new program single season best. Croke's total of 108 is the second highest single season tally from a Cascades men's basketball player, behind Zeon Gray's mark of 121 in the 24 game long 2010-11 season.
The Cascades honoured graduating players
Chris Jackson,
Takeshi Croke, and
Jake Willemsen in a pregame ceremony on Saturday for their final regular season games.
With the result, the Cascades will now travel to Victoria for their play-in round game next Friday at 5pm PT where they will play against the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns. The winner of that game will move on to face the top seeded University of Victoria Vikes the following day.
Quotable:
"It's a well-deserved moment. He's such a team first guy, and he does a great job of getting the right guys the right touches in the right spots. Kudos to him," Cascades head coach
Joe Enevoldson noted on Croke reaching the milestone.
"I think you're talking about three cornerstones of our togetherness and culture, and they all bring different things. They are our leadership group, and they bring those attributes that strengthen our program. To lose all three at once is going to be tough to replace, but it goes to show the amazing people that we have had in our program," Enevoldson explained on his three graduating players.
"Ultimately it's like Ted Lasso says, you have to be a goldfish. We have been playing pretty good basketball as of late. Maybe we had spots where we played really well tonight, and spots we didn't – but we gave ourselves chances to be successful both nights this weekend, and we are going to have to do that again next Friday," Enevoldson said of his team's focus going into next week.
