The Carleton women’s basketball team lost their USports National Championship final to the University of Saskatchewan 85-66. It was only the second loss for the Ravens all season.
The University of Saskatchewan Huskies were ranked number one coming into this tournament and beat the University of British Columbia 85-63 in their semi-final match.
The Ravens were looking to build momentum from their win over uOttawa 84-60 the night before and came into this game ready to battle for a third national championship. They beat out Saskatchewan last year to win the trophy with a nail-bitting game that ended 70-67.
Saskatchewan came out strong, using their height to grab both offensive and defensive rebounds. They were ahead 45-31 at halftime and Carleton was having a hard time stopping the Huskies from hitting three-point shots. Saskatchewan was hitting almost 50 per cent of their field goals and 86 per cent of their free throws compared to Carleton at 32 and 70 per cent respectively.
By the fourth quarter, the Huskies had pulled ahead by 20 and Carleton struggled to hold on.
Carleton accepted their second place medals and Teresa Donato was awarded Player of the Game for the Ravens, finishing the game with 24 points. She was also named a tournament all-star alongside Tayanna Burke. who finished the game with eight points and seven rebounds.
Gage Grassick was awarded Player of the Game for Saskatchewan, scoring 35 points in total. She hit seven three-point shots and 10 out of 12 free point shots. She was also a tournament all-star and MVP of the entire tournament. This comes less than a week after being named Most Outstanding Player of the Year at the USports All-Canadian ceremony.
Andrea Dodig for Saskatchewan and Natsuki Szczokin for uOttawa were also named tournament all-stars. Dodig finished the championship game with 12 points while Szczokin led her team to a bronze medal against UBC, winning 68-61.
The game was held at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre at UBC with a reported attendance of 1,744 fans in the building.
