Basketball teams combine for 4-0 record in games versus McGill and Bishop’s
The Concordia Stingers basketball teams swept the Bishop’s Gaiters Saturday afternoon at the Concordia Gym, as the women won 72-52 and the men won 105-91.
Women’s game
The Stingers women’s team was in a battle against the Gaiters. Bishop’s came into the game with a 1-2 record, but didn’t go easy on the Stingers.
The game was tied at 17 by the end of a competitive first quarter. Both defences were playing well, forcing shooters to settle for contested and difficult shots. The second quarter was quite similar, but the Stingers went into the halftime break up 34-33.
The third quarter was much sharper for both teams, as points were being scored almost at ease. Stingers guard Areej Burgonio was not a starter, but made her impact as she was the one that sparked the Stingers run and had control of the offence. Her ball handling and quickness really stood out. With six seconds left in the third quarter, she started with the ball in the Stingers’s end, and went coast-to-coast to finish it off with a beautiful spin and lay-up at the buzzer.
After the back-and-forth game, the Singers took the momentum they had from that play and pulled away in the fourth quarter. The Stingers’s 72-52 win improved their record to 3-1.
Stingers point guard Myriam Leclerc said they turned it around in the second half. “We weren’t really ourselves in the first half,” Leclerc said. “We were not showing our true identity. In the second half, we came out strong and that is why we won by 20.”
🐝🏀 WBB – Good luck stopping Areej Burgonio driving to the basket. Burgonio spins off her defender and scores a big basket for the Stingers.
Finish strong and flex on ’em. 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼#CUstingers #Montreal #Basketball pic.twitter.com/usGMQm1UrM
— Concordia Stingers (@The_Stingers) November 24, 2018
Moving forward, the Stingers want to continue their current three-game winning streak. “We want to end the first half of the season with a [win] so we just have to work hard at practice and continue to get better,” Leclerc added.
Men’s game
The men’s team was almost in full control of the game leading up to their victory. Despite missing multiple opportunities early in the game, they were up by seven after the first quarter. Guard Adrian Armstrong started the game with a hot hand, hitting three three-point shots to start the first quarter—and making it look easy. He finished the game with 22 points, hitting nine of his 14 field-goal attempts.
Going into the fourth quarter, the Stingers led by 17 points and it looked all but over. The Gaiters went on a run and, at one point, cut the Stingers lead to only four points. That was as close as they would get, though, as Concordia hit a few key three-pointers and came away with a 105-91 win. Like the women’s team, the men also hold a 3-1 record.
Stingers guard Cedrick Coriolan liked how they played, despite the fourth-quarter lapse. “We stuck to the game-plan and played really hard for pretty much the whole game,” he said. “We had a little bit of a lapse in the fourth quarter, but everybody stuck to what they had to do and we came up with the win which was the objective.”
The men’s and women’s team host the UQAM Citadins on Dec. 1 for their final game before the winter break.
Main photo by Hannah Ewen.
