Men’s Basketball
Before the U Sports winter break, we did not see much of Sami Jahan.
Since coming back from the break, the rookie point guard has certainly put his stamp on this team as a bonafide starting guard of the future.
Coming into this season, the depth of the Concordia Stingers men’s basketball team was a major question mark. Throughout the season different rookies have been stepping up—whether it be Ali White, Nathaniel Boisvert and now Jahan.
The Stingers took the first of the two matchups in four days by a score of 68-67. While veterans Olivier Simon, Cedrick-Bryan Coriolan and Sami Ghandour all had solid outings—it was the bench and role players who played a key role in the Stingers’ victory.
In Thursday night’s match, Jahan finished with a team high 17 points and five assists. He made some incredibly clutch shots down the stretch and proved that he can hang with the big boys. He showed off some incredible handles as well.
Second year guard Nathaniel Boisvert went 3/3 from 3-point range finishing with nine points in the contest.
However it was Cedrick-Bryan Coriolan who stole the show on Thursday. It was a tightly contested game the whole way through until Coriolan made an incredible highlight reel play, finished off by Jahan that ultimately put the nail in McGill’s coffin.
Saturday’s match-up at McGill was much of the same story. A tight game with neither team really able to pull away on the scoreboard. The game needed an extra frame to decide a winner, where Jahan put on a performance to remember.
The Stingers won on Saturday by a score of 89-83 with some more late game heroics from Coriolan and Jahan.
Jahan made some clutch free throws down the stretch and finished the game with 28 points—a career high for the rookie. Veterans Simon and Oge Nwoko also chipped in offensively with 21 and 15 points respectively. Nwoko also added 13 rebounds to his statline, finishing with a double-double.
Women’s Basketball:
Unfortunately for the women’s basketball team, they did not have the same fate as the men in their two matchups with the Martlets.
In the Thursday game, the Stingers led by five at half time but things fell apart for them in the third quarter where they were outscored by the Martlets by 11.
After a lights-out shooting performance in the first half, the Stingers went ice cold in the second, shooting just over 28 per cent––a far cry from the 38 per cent they were shooting in the first half.
While they did end up adding another loss to their record, a major positive coming out of the game was Nelly Owusu’s performance. She went 6/10 from the field and finished the game with a career and game high 17 points.
Owusu was the second highest ranked recruit last year behind the Stingers’ own Myriam Leclerc and after sitting out all of last year and half of this year with an injury, it was very nice to see what the second year player can do.
While the result was the same on Saturday, the story was certainly a different one. It looked like the Stingers were simply just overpowered by McGill. They played incredible defence forcing tough shots from the Stingers all afternoon.
Again, Owusu led the way in points for the team with 12, however the points were hard to come by for the rest of the team as the Stingers lost 75-53.
The Stingers have now fallen to the bottom of the RSEQ conference with the two losses but have played at least two fewer games than McGill and UQAM, the teams directly above them in the standings.
Feature photo by Cecilia Piga
