EDMONTON - Fifth-year point guard Jarred Ogungbemi-Jackson scored 14 points in the fourth-quarter alone, his 29-point performance pacing the No.7 University of Calgary Dinos to a 90-84 comeback win over the University of Alberta Golden Bears, Friday night at Saville Community Sports Centre.
The Winnipeg native added nine rebounds as well as eight assists while rookie German import Lars Schlueter netted 11 points. Sophomores John Hegwood and Jhony Verrone cracked the double-digit barrier with 10 points apiece.
Senio guard Kenny Otieno scored a team-high 25 points for the Bears, fellow fifth-year guard Joel Friesen putting up 18 while third-year guard Youssef Ouahrig added 14. Rookie forward Andriy Halushko scored 15 points on the night, all from long distance as the homegrown talent impressively nailed each of his five attempts from beyond the arc.
The Dinos improved to 9-2 on the season, while Alberta dropped below .500 to 4-5 to end the 2014 half of their season.
After Otieno opened the scoring with a crowd-pleasing dunk, the Lethbridge, Alta. native added five more points on an 11-1 run that put the Bears in the driver's seat, shooting at 64% compared to Calgary's 43%.
The Dinos tried to chip away at the lead, but the Bears always responded, including a momentum-generating shot in the dying seconds of the first quarter, Friesen driving to the basket, only to toss the rock back to an open Otieno who, cool and calculated, flushed the three-ball for 13 points in 10 minutes, Alberta up 29-17 leading into the second quarter.
Yet Calgary replied with the next bucket, Hegwood missing his layup only to have sophomore forward Connor Foreman slam dunk the rebound. The Dinos continued the strategy, miss on their first attempt only to drain the second, for most of the quarter, slowly erasing the 12-point deficit before Verrone tied things up at 46 with a trey at the 39-second mark.
Otieno took less than 10 seconds to make his own long-distance call to get the Bears back on top, Alberta taking the lead into the dressing room with Ognungbemi-Jackson's downtown special falling wide at the buzzer.
An 11-2 run by the home team pushed the lead back into double digits, but Bears' foul trouble kept the visitors from falling too far behind, draining seven of ten shots from the charity stripe, third-year guard Jasdeep Gill scoring on four of six straight chances at the free throw line, helping the Dinos to get the deficit back down to six to start the final quarter.
Then began the Ogungbemi-Jackson show, putting up eight straight points for Calgary, even though Alberta was holding or reclaiming the lead to keep ahead of last season's conference leading scorer, Ouahrig and Halushko both draining three-balls to increase the Bears' lead back to four.
The two-time conference all-star bookended a one-handed Hegwood dunk to put the Dinos on top by two, Friesen continuing the roller-coaster ride in the final minutes with back-to-back jumpers so Alberta could reclaim the lead.
Unfortunately for the home squad, that was all they would get, Ogungbemi-Jackson feeding Schlueter beyond the arc and senior forward Philip Barndt inside the paint to retrieve the lead once and for all.
With the Bears' agressive tactics leading to fouls, Jarred cemented the victory at the foul line, going 4-8 on the night.
Alberta will start the 2015 half of their season on the road against the Winnipeg Wesmen on January 9-10 while Calgary waits until the following weekend to get back into action, heading to Lethbridge to square off against the Pronghorns.
