October 26, 2009 ~ Women's Basketball

Victoria, B.C. - During an exhibition game series this past weekend at Camosun College in Victoria, the Kermodes Women's Basketball Team suffered two disappointing losses to the Kwantlen Eagles and the Capilano Blues.

In the first contest on Friday night, the Eagles came out on fire and took advantage of a sluggish looking Kermode defense, making 6 three point field goals in the first quarter.  Despite the hot start, the Quest women were able to put up some solid numbers of their own and managed to lead 40-37 going into half time.  The second half proved to be fatal for the Kermodes as they could not contain the hot shooting of Kwantlen and struggled to put up points of their own.  After going into the fourth quarter down 2, Quest had a collapse and was outscored 22-11 in the final frame, ending in a 74-61 defeat. 

Head coach Todd Jordan was unimpressed by the loss but gave credit to the Eagles.  "We played with very little energy defensively for most of the game and ultimately that was our downfall.  That being said, Kwantlen did a very good job of capitalizing and hitting shots when we gave them opportunities.  Coach Pawluk has them playing with a lot of confidence on the offensive end and really has them shooting the ball well.  They have a very small lineup that creates some matchup problems so we'll have to go back to the drawing board and change some things the next time we play them." 

On Saturday afternoon the Kermodes were in for a long game against the Blues of Capilano University.  After leading 14-11 at the end of the first frame the Blues cranked up the defensive intensity and the Quest women were not able to adjust.  They were down 10 at the half and were never able to make the necessary adjustments, eventually losing 71-50.  Coach Jordan was unhappy with the ball control of the Kermodes.  "Capilano came out and started full court pressing us in the second quarter.  It wasn't anything complicated but we panicked a bit and had some very poor turnovers.  When you throw the ball away in your backcourt you usually end up giving the opposition easy layup opportunities and that's exactly what happened.  They went on a 25-12 run in the second quarter and never looked back.  To their credit their pressure took us out of anything we wanted to do and it felt like we were playing uphill the entire game.  It was just one of those days where it felt like you couldn't do anything right.  We had a lot of mental errors that we'll have to clean up if we want to have a better result during our next contest.  We've spit a pair of games with the Blues so we're looking forward to playing them again during league play in the new year." 

The Kermodes have recently been suffering from numerous injuries as well as a flu bug that put multiple members of the squad out of commision for parts of last week.  "I don't want to use that as an excuse because it's something a number of the teams are dealing with right now," said Coach Todd Jordan, "but it makes it tough when you have four girls sitting out of practice for a long stretch.  We were generally pretty healthy by game time on Friday but we had a number of girls who had to play minutes that had barely practiced in over a week.  It makes it tough to have any kind of flow and it was obvious our legs weren't there like they have been in previous games.  The thing I was most disappointed in was that we made a large number of mental mistakes that were simply the result of a lack of focus.  We will get back into our regular practice routines this week and hopefully that will get us back on track and playing the way we will need to in order to be successful.  We play a very strong team in VIU during the first weekend of league play on November 6th and 7th, so it is important we get back into good habits."