From the first tip-off, the ball was in Clan hands for nearly the whole first half. The dominant opening 20 minutes against the Western Oregon Wolves led to the Clan’s tenth victory in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC).
Erin Chambers scored the first basket setting the tone for the rest of the game, but the score didn’t really start to ramp up in SFU’s favour until after the first media timeout early in the contest. The Wolves scored on a couple of free throws to bring the score to 14–10, but SFU would hold them to just four more points over the latter half of the opening frame.
Though Chambers opened the scoring, the star of the half was Rebecca Langmead, who scored 16 points and boosting the Clan’s slight edge to complete dominance.
While the Clan could find space at will in the Wolves’ end, there were no holes in the Clan’s defence, and at the midway point SFU was dominating Western Oregon, 35–14.
“We came out really strong defensively,” said point guard Marie-Line Petit, who had six assists on the night. “We knew really they had two weapons offensively, and we controlled them really well.”
But the Wolves turned things around in the second, draining 17 points in just over eight minutes. The previously tight Clan defence became sloppy, with WOU’s Kelsey Henry putting on a show much like Langmead in the first, dominating for a short time.
“[The Wolves] had that extra spark, maybe, that extra edge,” conceded Petit of her opposition’s strong second-half start.
But the Clan’s first-half cushion gave them a chance to regain their momentum. Halfway through the second, SFU rallied off 10 straight points, including two three-pointers by Chambers.
Langmead scored a career-high 24 points, and though the Wolves won the second half 36–35, the 21-point gap secured in the first by the Clan meant a decisive win, and a 10–4 conference record.
