Dinos knock Bobcat women back to .500

The Calgary Dinos didn’t have their shooting touch on Saturday, but showed the Brandon University Bobcats how to win ugly.

While they hit less than 40 per cent of their field goals, they rebounded and defended their way to 26 more looks than the Bobcats, translating into an 80-48 victory in their Canada West women’s basketball game at the Healthy Living Centre.

Bobcats head coach Ilarion Bonhomme tipped his cap to the unbeaten Dinos (4-0).

“Very physical team, they’ve been together a long time, rely heavily on a lot of fourth- and fifth-year players. Super well-coached, (Sarah Besselink) comes from Ottawa, been winning, and she’s done a really good job with those girls,” Bonhomme said.

“It just showed. And for sure, obviously we’re missing key, key pieces right now and even without those pieces, we could have put on a better performance.”

Brandon (3-3) definitely contributed to Calgary’s offensive struggles, limiting it to 18 points fewer than Friday night. The Dinos didn’t have as many easy looks, but took advantage of 24 offensive rebounds and scored 25 second-chance points.

“Tons of positives we can take away. We were much, much better defensively,” Bonhomme said.

“We did a much better job of locating their shooters and closing out to them, but in turn, we were so committed to that we started giving up offensive rebounds.

“You gotta do both. I can close out to the shooter, now I’m going to go crash, make sure I get the rebound.”

A night after Brandon got absolutely lit up in the first quarter, its defence was ready to prevent Calgary’s high-tempo drive-and-dish offence.

The Bobcats limited the easy buckets and denied a few layups as Jayna Maytwayashing made two big blocks and Ivy Bestland added another.

Conference scoring leader Macaya Copeland continued her torrid start to the season with a quick five points, helping limit Calgary’s lead to just 20-13 through 10 minutes.

Ella Averill banked a three-pointer in to start the second, using up every ounce of Brandon’s luck for the quarter.

The Bobcats didn’t make another shot, not even a free throw, for the next eight minutes.

BU’s defence wasn’t bad considering U of C was able to get up the floor quickly on almost every possession, but the visitors still rattled off a long 19-0 run before Piper Ingalls sank a foul shot.

The Dinos opened up a 45-19 lead at halftime.

It was more or less over at that point. The second half featured a whole bunch of missed shots and mistakes on both ends. BU brought its turnover count to a whopping 30, allowing 27 points off of those.

“Going into every game, I’m like, ‘I know we’re going to have 15 turnovers,’” Bonhomme said.

“We just try to limit the careless turnovers where we’re just throwing the ball away. That’s one of our major keys. (Saturday), we just didn’t do enough. Offensively, we just didn’t do the best job of trying to get paint touches.”

Ingalls finished with a team-high 11 points for Brandon on 4-for-15 shooting.

Christine Geraldo led all scorers with 15 points.

BU made just four of 22 threes, while Calgary hit 10 of 29.

“It’s a learning experience,” Bonhomme said, “and I’m confident we’ll learn from this.”

The Bobcats visit the Alberta Pandas next weekend, while the BU volleyball teams host the Manitoba Bisons.

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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