ZF,
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UNBC

Brady Stark
Team Member

espite a rather disappointing start to the season for

both the men’s and women’s basketball season, there is
still high expectations for achieving a spot in the playoffs.
Facing Thompson River in the first week was a tough break
as both squads played their hearts out to no avail. One of the
bright points to the weekend however was the play of 4th
year guard, Rhys Elliott, who was dominant in the 2 game set
scoring 29 and 30 points respectively. If the Timberwolves are
wanting to make positive waves, they are going to need to do
it with a balanced attack and some strong team play.

Elliott cannot continue to carry the team throughout the
whole season, especially when the team goes up against
the very best in the Canada West. Most of the higher teams
in the Canada West have the ability to recruit some of the
bigger name students from High schools that don’t go

the US college route. With the Timberwolves, they do not
have the resources or the prestige of other universities to

| ~ Great Expectations for
 v UNBC Basketball

grab the attention of the game changers, therefore they
have to have a system of play that utilizes everyone’s
strengths from the starters to the men and women that
come off the bench. In many of the games that have been
won by the statically weaker teams in basketball, it was
the bench players that have made all the difference.

Sometimes there needs to be a war of attrition that
needs to be the main game pan when squeaking

out close contests. Make no mistake, our men and
women’s teams are good and deserve to be in the CIS,
but they need to be realistic when looking at their
goals for the season and looking at their roster.

Coaches Sergey Shechepotkin and Todd Jordan, have the
unenviable task of taking teams that were dominate in the
lower league and trying to make them consistent playoff
contenders every year. With the men, the coach needs to
preach a team mentality with lots of crisp passing and some

key perimeter shooting to keep their opponents off guard.
For the women, Sergey needs to preach patience to his team
as well as the fans that follow them faithfully. Unlike the
men, the women’s team is rather young by comparison. With
only a few players past their 2nd year of CIS experience,
there will be a lot of growing pains as they try to understand
the pace of the game as well as how to exploit the other
team’s weaknesses. So, what should the expectations for
each team be? The men should at least make it to the playoffs
like last year. Whenever one is developing a program, you
always need to strive for better than last year. Don’t expect
miracles for this relatively young program but we should see
some fantastic close games that we come out on top more
times than not. For the women, one should only expect an
exciting brand of basketball with some close games and
some blowouts peppered in. With this fun style of play we
should all hope for some W’s on the scoresheet this year.