EDMONTON - Back and forth they went, trading buckets, dunks, leads, momentum, and fouls, but when the dust settled, the hometown University of Alberta Golden Bears basketball team was left standing with the ball as they scored a 86-76 win over the fourth-ranked University of Calgary Dinos, Saturday night before a packed house in the Main Gym.
BOX SCORE
In what was the final home regular season game for three Golden Bear careers, Neb Aleksic, Justin VanLoo, and head coach Don Horwood went out as winners.
Horwood, the 26-year U of A head coach, who announced his retirement in November of 2008 and will walk away from CIS basketball at the completion of the 2008-09 CIS season, picks up a win in his final regular season game as bench boss, and he does it against provincial rival, Calgary. He leaves with a 313-175 career regular season coaching record and a .641 winning percentage. He is among the CIS all-time coaching wins leaders; he is a three-time CIS coach of the year and has three national championship trophies.
As an added bonus, with Saturday night's win, Horwood also leaves, unofficially, with a career conference record of 57-35 versus the Calgary Dinos and has a 101-55 overall mark in games against Calgary.
Calgary's Henry Bekkering, who scored a season-high 41 points last night in a Dinos' win, started the game off strong for the visitors, silencing the sold-out crowd and putting his team in front 20-14 through 10 minutes. His alley-oop dunk in the first quarter seemed to emphasize that he, like Friday night, was going to take control.
Fourth-year guard C.G. Morrison would quickly rain on Bekkering's parade, draining two three-point attempts to get the Bears level and on the right track. He also hit a last-second turn-around jumper to knot the score up at 40-40 at half-time.
The Dinos and Bears swapped leads throughout the third quarter, but Calgary clearly held the edge in play, earning a slim 63-59 advantage with 10 minutes to go.
But those final 10 minutes were dominated by the Bears and their three guards, Morrison, Aleksic, and Scott Leigh.
Leigh played every minute of the game, using his dynamic ball-handling skills to dish out six assists and to score a team-high 20 points. The third-year man from North Vancouver, BC, hit three of eight long balls, and was Alberta's top player on the floor.
Battling injury, shooting guard Aleksic found his inside game, making several buckets off the glass from underneath and picking up an assist on the play of the night.
With Harvey Bradford set to in-bound from under his own glass, he launched a deep ball into the Calgary zone where Aleksic just caught up to it under the Dino hoop. Without stopping, looking, or thinking, he threw his hand out in front of himself, collected the over-head pass and blindly tossed it back over his head right into the hands of Patrick Maloney, who kissed it off the glass for two points.
Aleksic also hit a pair of treys in the second half, finishing with 16 points.
As the clock wound down, the Bears simply out-gunned the Dinos, getting shots to count and forcing their opponent to hurry their own attempts.
Morrison topped out at 17 points and four assists off the bench, while VanLoo was tagged with early fouls and only hit nine points. Bradford added nine points, 10 rebounds and four assists in the victory.
Bekkering was still the lead man in scoring; banking a game-high 30 points, while younger brother Ross Bekkering, scored 13 points and eight rebounds. Second-year, 6'9" guard Tyler Fidler had six assists and nine points, while Robbie Sihota added 14 in a losing cause.
Alberta returns to action next weekend as they host the opening round of the Canada West playoffs. The Bears and Saskatchewan Huskies will meet in a best-of-three series, starting next Friday night, tip-off at 8 p.m. MT, where the winner will advance to Calgary for the divisional final.
The Dinos play host to the Central Division Final Feb. 20-22 in the Jack Simpson Gym.
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