DURHAM STUNS GEORGE BROWN

Broadcastsports Staff                                                                                 Posted February 20. 2008

Toronto, ON - The George Brown Huskies stayed true to form and it cost them a trip to the playoffs. 

 All season long the Huskies played inconsistent ball. They would loose to bottom of the table teams such as La Cite yet score impressive wins on the road. Their roller coaster play was evident again last night at home against  the Durham Lords. The Huskies needed a win to advance to post season berth. After falling behind by 16 points, the Huskies staged a furious second half rally but it fell short in a 64-63 loss.

The loss eliminated the (8-12) Huskies from the playoffs and gave the (10-10) Lords the 6th and  final playoff spot in the OCAA East division and a trip to London to face the Fanshawe Falcons in Sunday's 6 vs 3 crossover game.

"I don't think all season long we worked hard to win" says Huskies Coach O'Neil Kamaka. "They won because they deserved it". he continued.

Kamaka's lament was borne out in the up and down nature of his  teams play. "This is a young team" says Kamaka,"Hopefully they learn something from this and put in the work to get better".

Ironically the Lords also struggled with consistency all season and saved their season by winning 5 of their last 6 games to force the one game showdown with the Huskies.

"We started the year with 4 wins and 9 losses" says winning coach Peter Gordon. "Everyone was writing us off but we knew we could do it." he continued.

Durham led 35-19 at the half and stretched the lead to 42-26 before George Brown began their comeback. Huskies forward Shane Rowe who was averaging  16PPG against the league, did not score the first half mostly due to foul trouble. Once he got rolling in the second half.

 Durham played superb defense in the opening half looked unsure and could do nothing to stem the Huskies run. A 28-12 George Brown run tied the score at 54 all. With 1:25 left Rowe fouled out with 12 points.

The Huskies took 58-56 but the Lords scored 4 straight to lead 60-58.  Huskies Markus Reeves then drilled long jumper to level the game at 60 all with 45 seconds left.

On the  subsequent possession the Huskies could or did not run the play called by their Coach. 

"The play was for guard Nathan (Thompson) to find Colin (Whitely) on a back door cut" says Kamaka, "but he just didn't run the play".

Instead Thompson threw up an off balance jumper that missed. Durham guard Sean Mangot ended up with the ball and sped by Thompson for the go ahead lay-up.

With Huskies down by two, Kamaka choose not to call a timeout. He once again called for Thompson to find Whitely on the back door cut, but once again the play failed.

Huskies were forced to foul and Durham big man Liam McMorrow nailed 2 free throws for the deciding points.

 Email comments to info@broadcastsports.ca