CALGARY – The four fifth-year seniors honoured before the game were fittingly important to the outcome as the sixth-ranked Calgary Dinos finished off a sweep of the Regina Cougars with a 93-84 win Saturday night in the Jack Simpson Gym.

BOX SCORE

Lindsay Thouret, Jamie McLeod, Robbie Sihota, and Ross Bekkering were all recognized in a pre-game ceremony before the final regular season home game of their CIS careers, and all made an instant impact on the scoresheet – Calgary's first eight points of the night came courtesy two each from the four seniors.

“Those four guys are all good players, and they're all good people,” said Calgary head coach Dan Vanhooren. “Their contributions to our program and to this team have been unbelievable in so many facets, from helping market us or talking to the community in different ways. We look forward to them all contributing as alumni as well.”

On this night it was a monster third quarter that pulled the Dinos (13-4) in front of the Cougars (8-8) for good as Calgary won its 15th consecutive game against Regina stretching back four decades to January 1970. Since Canada West merged with the Great Plains Athletic Conference and meetings between the teams became annual, the Dinos have a 13-0 record against the Cougars.

With a 15-point Calgary lead after the third quarter, both teams abandoned defence to combine for 66 points in the final 10 minutes. Regina was able to cut the Calgary lead to as few as seven points with just over a minute left on the clock, thanks largely to clutch outside shooting, but the Dinos connected on 14 of their 20 free throw attempts in the quarter to close out the win.

Five different Cougars fouled out in the final minute of the game, and Calgary's last 13 points came from the charity stripe.

“We started off okay, but it was a pretty brutal game and we had to play some garbage basketball for a while,” said Vanhooren. “I thought our bench contributed pretty well, and we were able to get out on them in the third quarter again.

“I maybe subbed a little too early so that our seniors could get some appreciation and it was too bad the end of the game stretched out so long, but you have to give it to (Regina), they're fighting for their playoff lives and they're not going to give up just because we have seniors.”

Sihota recorded the game's only double-double with 20 points and 11 rebounds, while McLeod added 17 points in just 20 minutes. Bekkering and Tyler Fidler each added 11 points for Calgary, while Bekkering managed just one rebound on the night to leave him four short of the 900 mark on his career with three games left in the season.

The shooting of fourth-year guard Jeff Lukomski was the only thing that kept the Cougars in the game, especially in the first half. He was 4-for-7 from beyond the arc in the opening 20 minutes and finished the night with six threes to total a game-high 23 points. With 230 three-balls in his career, Lukomski sits just nine short of the all-time Canada West record of 239 held jointly by UBC's Casey Archibald (2002-07) and Lethbridge's Danny Balderson (1993-95, 1997-2000).

Paul Schubach was the only other Cougar to hit double digits, scoring 18.

The win moves Calgary's magic number to clinch the Prairie Division pennant to just two, meaning that any combination of Calgary wins and Saskatchewan losses adding up to two over the final two weeks of the season guarantees the Dinos the top seed in the division heading into the playoffs, which begin Feb. 26.

“Saskatchewan has a couple of tough games against Regina coming up, but we need to focus on ourselves,” said Vanhooren. “We need to peak heading into the playoffs, and this 'Jekyll-and-Hyde' thing needs to stop – whichever one of those is better for us, we need to start playing that way consistently.”

Regina hosts the winless Winnipeg Wesmen for a two-game set next weekend before closing the year with the aforementioned home-and-home series against Saskatchewan. Calgary closes out its season on the road, with two games at Brandon next weekend followed by a single at Lethbridge Feb. 13.

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