Stingers singing the blues

Toronto Varsity Blues’ Thomas Grochmal racked up a game high 30 points in a solid all around performance to handily defeat the hometown Concordia Stingers 81-73.
“We were sluggish, slow to move, our cuts weren’t as fluid as they were before,” said Stingers guard Gavin Musgrave. “They just played a better game then us. They won it fair and square.”
Concordia’s agility, strength and athleticism was apparent in the start of the first half as the Stingers went on a tear, accumulating a 15-6 lead five minutesin.
“We started out the game well, going inside to Real (Kitieu),” said Musgrave.
“Once we were up 15-6, we stopped giving the ball to Real. We tried to do other things and it didn’t work.”
Soon there after, costly turnovers by Concordia in the offensive zone coupled with aggressive defense by Toronto catapulted the Blues within two points of the
lead.
Toronto finally gained the lead about half way into the first half but was later recovered by Concordia with strong inside positioning drives by Stinger forward James Aubourg.
With the lead at 26-23 in Concordia’s favour, Toronto began distributing the ball extremely well with the focus on looking for a clean, outside shot.
It took little time before Toronto regained the lead for good.
The Blues started to double team Stingers top scoring centre Real Kitieu thus disabling one of Concordia’s main offensive producers.
“We got away from our game plan a little bit,” said head coach John Dore. “They made their shots when they had to, they passed well and defended very well.”
The first half ended with Toronto leading 39-34 following a buzzer beating three pointer by the Blues.
In the second half, Toronto continued their brilliant shot making and ball distribution on offence with smothering defense at the other end of the court.
Although regularly double-teamed, Real Kitieu started to show his dominance on the boards approximately five minutes in. Real finished the game making 10 of 22 shots, a team high 23 points, 21 rebounds and five blocked shots.
“It could have been better because I thought I had a pretty poor field percentage due to the double teams,” said Kitieu. “The game could have been completely different because of that.”
Midway into the second half, Concordia attempted to mount a comeback. However, every time the Stingers accumulated some points, Toronto quickly answered back with fire power of their own.
“We tried to press and get some turnovers but every time we got a turnover and made a positive, they responded at the other end,” said coach Dore.
The Stingers came as close at five points to the lead with the score of 68-63 with 5:24 remaining in the game but Toronto was simply too strong on this day.
“They played within the framework of their game plan and we didn’t play in the framework of ours,” said coach Dore. “We didn’t play to the level where we should be playing at.”

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