Tag: Tenicha Gittens

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Stingers drop doubleheader at home against McGill

home against mcgill
Concordia Stingers guard Ken Beaulieu dunks against the McGill Redmen on Jan. 11. Photo by Kirubel Mehari.

Women lose halftime lead, while men fall short in tight game

The new year has yet to be good to Concordia’s basketball teams, as the Stingers lost both games in their doubleheader at home against McGill on Jan. 11.

Women’s game

The Concordia Stingers women’s basketball team lost to the McGill Martlets by a score of 70-55. The game was tight in the first half, going back and forth with not much ground given on either side. Concordia went into halftime leading 34-31.

In the second half, the Martlets erased the deficit and slowly built up their lead. When asked about the most prominent factor in losing this game, head coach Tenicha Gittens was critical of her team’s rebounding effort. “We have to be better on the boards,” she said, adding that they have to “find a body and box out.”

The Martlets won the game by out-hustling the Stingers on rebounds, especially at the offensive end, where they secured 19 offensive rebounds, many of which led to second-chance points. Gittens explained that, when her players don’t secure rebounds, it makes it tough for them to get in transition and use their speed, limiting most of their offensive talent.

Guard Aurelie d’Anjou Drouin led the team in scoring with 10 points coming off the bench, while guards Caroline Task and Sabrina Stambouli each scored nine points.

Forward Marvia Dean shoots a free-throw against the McGill Martlets on Jan. 11. Photo by Kirubel Mehari.

Men’s game

The men’s team played the second game of the doubleheader, and again weren’t able to stop McGill, as they lost to the Redmen by a score of 88-81.

The game was back and forth to say the least, with eight lead changes and four ties throughout. The Stingers looked best in the first half when, at one point, they were leading by 13 points. Eventually, McGill began to pressure the Stingers in Concordia’s half of the court, hoping to create turnovers and close the gap. The plan worked. Soon enough, Concordia’s lead was gone, and they were instead playing catch-up.

Guard Ken Beaulieu made a valiant effort to help the Stingers complete a comeback, leading the team with 24 points—14 coming in the fourth quarter alone—and adding seven rebounds, four assists, three steals and a block.

The Redmen were proficient in the paint, scoring 52 points within close range, compared to 38 from the Stingers. The abundance of high percentage shots and a couple of timely threes by guard Dele Ogundokun of the Redmen in the fourth were enough to put the nail in Concordia’s proverbial coffin.

Both Concordia Stingers basketball teams will get their shot at redemption against McGill. They play a doubleheader at McGill on Jan. 13, with the women playing at 4 p.m. and the men at 6 p.m.

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Making her debut a year late

Ashley Moss started playing basketball when her family moved to a new neighbourhood in Nassau, Bahamas. Photo by Kirubel Mehari.

Ashley Moss was injured in her first game as a Stinger, but returned this season

Ashley Moss joined the Concordia Stingers women’s basketball team before the 2016-17 season with high expectations for herself and her team. As a transfer from the Holland Hurricanes of Charlottetown, P.E.I., she came to Concordia with one goal in mind—to help put a championship banner in the rafters of the Stingers’s home court.

Before she could help her team to the top, Moss had a hill of her own to climb. In her very first game with the Stingers in October 2016, Moss went down with what was later discovered to be a serious injury. Tests revealed she had torn her left Achilles tendon as well as her meniscus. These injuries kept her sidelined for the rest of her first season, and marked the beginning of a tedious, year-long rehabilitation process.

While this devastating injury presented Moss with a tough road to recovery, she is not a stranger to long and winding roads. Moss was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas. When she was in 12th grade, her family moved to a different part of the city, which is where basketball first caught her eye. According to Moss, basketball started not so much as a passion, but as a necessity.

“There was a court on the side of my house. I was in a new neighbourhood, and the only thing to do was to go watch the boys play basketball,” she said. Eventually, Moss got tired of watching. She began participating in the street games and competing against full-grown men at the age of 18. From here, both her love and skill for the game developed.

Standing at 5-10, Moss is a lengthy, athletic forward. Her size gives her a particular type of defensive prowess which is cherished by coaches, and is what ended up earning her a spot on the Bahamas national women’s basketball team. She played on the national team for three years. In 2015, her last season with the team, she helped lead the Bahamas to a gold medal at the International Basketball Federation Caribbean Basketball Confederation (FIBA CBC) championship.

Moss injured her Achilles tendon in her first game last season, and missed the entire year. Photo by Kirubel Mehari.

She wanted to see how much further basketball could take her, and decided to leave the tropical heat of the Caribbean for the bitter cold of Canada to keep playing. Moss began her collegiate career at Holland College in 2013-14. In her three seasons at Holland College, she won back-to-back Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Association (ACAA) championships in 2015 and 2016, and helped the team compete in their first two national championship tournaments.

From the Bahamas to P.E.I., Moss made a tough transition but maintained a winning pedigree. Moss said her move was tough because she had never been away from her family, nor had she seen the school. This is exactly what she was preparing to do again, when she moved from Charlottetown to Montreal, where she felt she had the best chance to keep winning. Moss said Stingers head coach Tenicha Gittens influenced her to make the switch to Concordia.

Gittens helped ease the transition for Moss by bringing in fellow Holland College recruits, Marvia Dean and Jazlin Barker, for the 2016-17 season.

“[Gittens] was on the same page as us,” Moss said. “She wanted to win a championship, and I feel like we can do it with her.”

Unfortunately for Moss, she was not able to join her former Hurricanes teammates on the court in her first season as a Stinger.

When asked to describe her journey back from last year’s season-ending injury, Moss did not lie about how hard it was. “My rehab was really rough, but what was even harder than the rehab was watching my teammates play,” she said. “The wins were good, but when they lost and struggled, I really felt the struggle.” According to Moss, she had to learn to walk again, and at times, was limited to shooting shots while sitting down in a chair with her leg up in a boot, as her teammates practiced.

As of today, Moss is healthy and off to a strong start this year. She won Most Valuable Player of the Concordia Classic Tournament in October, which her team won, and was named athlete of the week twice in the preseason. On Nov. 9, she played her first regular season game at home in front of a noisy crowd, which she had been itching to do.

“Do you know how long I’ve waited to play in this gym? I’ve been waiting forever to play in front of this crowd,” Moss said enthusiastically.

Her pent up energy was on full display in the home opener, where she had game-highs in both rebounds, with 12, and blocks, with five.

The word resilient describes Moss’s journey, her character and her style of play. She never lets a bad break, a tough challenge or a daunting task keep her down. She consistently bulldozes her way through the obstacles in front of her, and in doing so, wins, both in life and in basketball.

Main photo by Kirubel Mehari.

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Experience, chemistry will lead women’s team

Head coach Tenicha Gittens wants to lead the Concordia Stingers women’s basketball team back to the RSEQ final. Photo by Alex Hutchins.

Head coach Tenicha Gittens looks to build off surprise playoff run to RSEQ final last year

“Nothing beats experience.” That’s what the head coach of the Concordia Stingers women’s basketball team, Tenicha Gittens, said she believes. She is counting on experience and chemistry to lead her team to a successful 2017-18 season.

With two seasons worth of experience as a head coach, and a team with many returning players, Gittens is looking to build upon last year’s incredible season. Despite finishing in fourth place in a five-team division with a 7-9 record during the regular season, the Stingers were able to make it all the way to the final of the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ) last season. They upset first-placed Laval Rouge et Or in the semi-final before losing to the McGill Martlets in the final.

Throughout this year’s training camp, Gittens has noticed the team is more comfortable with her systems, both on offence and defence, which gives her confidence in the team’s ability to implement them in games. According to Gittens, players are now familiar enough with these schemes that she doesn’t need to keep teaching them every practice. Instead, she can focus on other aspects of training. This kind of familiarity with Gittens’ strategies gave players a head start coming into training camp, and made it easier for new players to adjust to the team.

Latifah Roach looks for an open teammate against the McGill Martlets during the 2016-17 season. Archive photo by Ana Hernandez.

Familiar faces are not the only advantage this team has going into the 2017-18 season. There are also some recent additions which should help bolster the lineup. Ashley Moss, who missed the entire regular season and playoffs last year with a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), is now healthy and ready to contribute. At 5-11, she brings athleticism and versatility to the team, being that she can slot in at either guard or forward.

Coralie Dumont is another exciting new addition. She is a lengthy 6-1 guard who, according to Gittens, can stretch the floor with her three-point shooting. She averaged double digits in both points and rebounds in her three years playing for the Champlain St-Lambert Cavaliers in CEGEP. On paper, both players should help improve the team’s offensive rebounding, which finished dead last in the division last season at 30.4 rebounds per game.

Gittens used the Concordia Classic Tournament, which ran from Oct. 6 through 8, to test out her new players and get her team ready for the regular season. She said it provided the most authentic form of preparation for the regular season: “We just [needed] that tip-off, more in-game experience.”

The tournament also allowed Gittens to evaluate all the strengths and weaknesses of her team. One principle she sought to improve on going into the tournament was ball movement—the team was middle of the pack in assists per game last year with 12, and near the bottom of the division in overall field goal percentage at 35.2 per cent. Good ball movement would help secure more open shot attempts to increase their field goal percentage.

While there is always room for improvement, Gittens is confident in the group of players she has in front of her. According to the head coach, the speed and athleticism of her players enable them to form a solid team identity. They are a hounding defensive unit, as shown by their league-leading 10.1 steals per game last season. On offence, Gittens added, they are a speedy transition team with solid shooting.

The Stingers play pre-season games for the rest of October. They will tip off their regular season at home on Nov. 9 against the Bishop’s Gaiters.

Main photo by Alex Hutchins

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Sports

A deep bench is the key to success

The Concordia Stingers went 7-9 last year in the RSEQ division. Photos by Marie-Pierre Savard.

Concordia Stingers women’s basketball head coach Tenicha Gittens talks about the upcoming year

The Concordia Stingers women’s basketball team is starting its second year under the guidance of head coach Tenicha Gittens who believes that they can improve on last year’s 7-9 record.

The nomination of Gittens as head coach in late July 2015 prevented her from monitoring the team’s conditioning during last year’s off-season, since she was brought in so close to training camp.

This time around, players are taking part in her rigorous program that has had returning players breaking a heavy sweat since April. Gittens ensured that her players are already starting to see results and improvement when it comes to skills and fitness.

According to Gittens, the team has added more skilled players to the roster so that the team has more options down the stretch. These additions address the team’s lack of depth from last year. Now the emphasis will be on wreaking havoc, especially on the defensive side of the ball.

The Stingers are adding five new recruits this year.  Three of those recruits, forward Marvia Dean, forward Ashley Moss and guard Jazlyn Barker were all teammates at Holland College in Prince Edward Island. The team also added Donna Lamont from Jamaica and point guard Caroline Task from Vanier College. Gittens described the new recruiting class as one that is strong defensively, which fits the style of game she is trying to teach her team.

“Defense is something we focus on a lot in practice every single day,” Gittens said. “[The team] sometimes hates it but they know they have to do it because it’s just going to make us better as a unit.”

Her coaching philosophy starts with the importance of getting defensive stops.

“It’s the one thing you can control. You can’t say that every game you are going to score thirty plus points a quarter,” Gittens said, adding that scoring is a question of effort and playing for the teammate in front of you.

Last year’s team boasted two of the top three scorers in the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ) division with forward Richelle Grégoire and forward Marilyse Roy-Viau. The team’s scoring came in spurts, and the team enjoyed success on the offensive side of the ball for much of the season. On the other hand, it proved to be an ineffective way of winning games against powerhouses like the Université de Laval and McGill. The goal this year is to be one of the top 10 defensive teams in the league.

Coach Gittens said that depth will be the key to her team’s success this year.

Gittens said that while Grégoire played great for the team last season, she has the potential to be play even better this year.

“The work ethic she has is unbelievable and everybody wants [Grégoire] on their team because of how she plays,” Gittens said. Gittens added that if one were to watch Grégoire in practice, they would see a strong effort that is always translated to games.

Gittens also complimented Grégoire’s leadership skills, noting that she has a different mindset that sets her apart from the other players.

“She takes the last shot in practice. If she doesn’t take the last [shot] in practice, I’m mad,” Gittens said.

The Stingers will look to feed off of that energy as they start their tournament season on Sept. 30 in the Nipissing tournament. Gittens said the team is in a “win now mode” since the addition of more depth will help them get through the tournament season. Gittens said she is confident that every player on the team is able to contribute 20 to 25 minutes of playing time per night, which will keep the team fresh throughout the season.

The Stingers will play their first regular season game at home on Nov. 6 against Bishop’s University at 6 p.m.

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