Freshly crowned champions of the Concordia-Adidas tournament, that saw them go 3-0, the Concordia Stingers women’s basketball team beat the UQÀM Citadins 67-54 on home court last Friday.
This game had a little more meaning to it as the Stingers hosted Shoot for a Cure, an event the Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS) league does in every university to raise money for breast cancer. All donations from this event went to the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation.
The last time these two teams played was at UQÀM where the Stingers lost after blowing a big lead in the second half. Friday night was a different Stingers team as they forced UQÀM to commit 24 turnovers in the game, including 16 steals.
The Stingers won the tipoff but the Citadins would get the first points by centre Camille Michaud. The Stingers responded with their first points as defender Marilyse Roy-Viau got a basket as she was falling.
UQÀM dominated early, scoring the next couple of points and taking a 9-2 lead, 3:12 seconds into the fourth quarter. Stingers’ guard, Alex Boudreau, got a three-point jump shot to reduce the Citadins lead to 9-5, but that’s the closest the Stingers would get to try to tie it in the first quarter, as UQÀM led 19-13.
The Stingers got the first points of the second quarter on a basket by forward Richelle Gregoire. Concordia took their first lead of the game on a Roy-Viau jump shot with 4:02 left in the second quarter, making it 25-24. The rest of the quarter saw some back-and-forth action, as both teams swapped leads. However, it was the Stingers who were up 32-29 after two quarters of play.
UQÀM scored two early baskets to take the lead in the third quarter, but not for long. Stingers guard, Kaylah Barrett’s, two free throws would tie the game at 34 at 8:24 of the quarter and Roy-Viau’s jump shot 20 seconds later gave the Stingers the two-point lead.
The third quarter also featured a lot of back-and-forth play. The Citadins tied the game at 40 halfway through the quarter on a jump shot by guard Valerie Gauvin. With a couple of late free throws by guards Tamara Pinard-Devos and Daphne Thouin,Concordia got the lead back and extended their lead by four points, 49-45, going into the last quarter of play.
UQÀM had 4-0 run to start the fourth quarter but Concordia responded with two baskets by Barrett. Boudreau’s three-pointer with 1:33 left in the game sealed the 67-54 win for the Stingers.
The Stingers player of the game was Barrett, who had 12 points with four rebounds. She also went six-for-six on the free throw line. The Stingers were 70.8 per cent on the free throw line in the game.
“We execute on offense well, [but our] defence could have been better,” head coach Keith Pruden said. “ [I’m] pleased about how tough we were.”
Roy-Viau said that the Stingers were more prepared for this game then the last time they played UQÀM.
