It looked like it was going to be déjà vu all over again for the University of Victoria Vikes men's basketball team.
Just like Friday night's game against the Trinity Western Spartans, the Vikes held a slim lead at the half, but the Spartans came back to take the lead early in the third and went on to beat the Vikes.
Saturday night, the Vikes were having none of that.
Michael Acheampong, Reiner Theil and Brin Taylor took turns putting up three-pointers late in the third and early in the fourth quarter as UVic pulled away for a 77-63 win at McKinnon Gym.
And fittingly, Taylor hit a trey with four seconds remaining to cap the scoring.
"We finally started hitting our shots," said Taylor, a rookie guard out of Jasper Place High School in Edmonton. "Shots we had been taking throughout the game just weren't going in but we kept plugging away and plugging away and eventually they started dropping."
Taylor and Acheampong finished with three three-pointers each, while Theil added a pair. Acheampong finished with a team-high 17 points and helped spur the second-half run with some clutch buckets.
"We were a little inconsistent in the first half. We would make a couple but then give a couple back, so we couldn't get any momentum," said Vikes coach Craig Beaucamp, whose team improved to 5-1 on the season. "But then we started shooting better and making some stops at the other end and that's how you get your momentum - you get a few at one end and stop a few at the other and that's what we did in the second half."
The Vikes came flying out of the gate and led 8-2 early, thanks to some solid play on the defensive boards by centre Chris McLaughlin, who finished the game with nine defensive boards and 12 overall. But led by their go-to guy Mark Perrin, the Spartans (3-3) wouldn't go away. Perrin led all scorers with 24 points.
But on this night, a team effort from the Vikes overcame Perrin's performance. the Vikes had nine players make the scoresheet.
"We finally came together as a team in the second half and really gained some confidence," Taylor said.
And the Vikes did not want to get swept on their home floor.
"You don't want to string consecutive losses together so this was a big win for us," Beaucamp said. "After that tough loss, it was important to bounce back and get back to doing some positive things and we had a lot of positive things tonight."
In the women's game, the Vikes learned their lesson from the night before and came storming out of the gate en route to a 72-59 victory.
After starting slow on Friday night against the Spartans (2-4) and needing a late charge to win, the Vikes (4-2) and sharp-shooting guard Debbie Yeboah pounded the Spartans early with leads of 22-14 after the first quarter and 42-28 at the half.
Yeboah racked up 16 points in the first half, and finished with 23 as the Vikes stay perfect on their home court at 4-0.
UVic floor general Cassandra Goodis controlled the game from start to finish. The third-year point guard from Penticton had 14 points and eight assists. Claremont grad Jessica Renfrew added 13 points for the Vikes.
The Spartans got another monster game from Calgary native Holly Strom. She put up 31 and a game-high 13 rebounds.
Both UVic teams now head to the Prairies. The Vikes will visit the University of Alberta in Edmonton on Friday night, followed by a trip to Saskatoon on Saturday to face the Saskatchewan Huskies. [email protected]
