By Earl Zukerman
McGill’s men’s and women’s basketball teams won their respective RSEQ championships and qualified for the national championships later this month. The victories were made all the sweeter because both teams prevailed in games that could be best described as nail biters.
Anneth Him-Lazarenko of Panama City, registered a ‘double-double” and led McGill to a nail-biting 51-48 victory over Concordia to capture the RSEQ women’s basketball conference title for the second straight year, before a record home crowd of 1,023 at Love Competition Hall, Saturday.
The Martlets will head out west next week, in a quest for their first ever national championship at the CIS Final Eight tourney, scheduled to be held in Regina, March 15-17.
McGill led 19-12 after the opening quarter, 32-23 at the half and 42-34 after three quarters but the Stingers whittled away in the final stanza and narrowed the gap to 50-48 with 17 seconds left on the clock.
Him Lazarenko, a 5-foot-10 power forward who was raised in Ste. Dorothee, Que., scored 14 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. She shot 6-for-10 from the field and made half of her four attempts from the free-throw line.
For the full women’s basketball story, click here.
On the men’s side, Montrealer Adrian Hynes-Guery scored 24 points as McGill rallied from a 15-point deficit to defeat Bishop’s 77-74 in a heart-thumping RSEQ men’s basketball championship final before a record crowd of 1,023 at Love Competition Hall, Saturday.
It was McGill’s 21st conference title overall but their first since 1986, when they advanced to a CIS regional tournament. The Redmen are scheduled to depart on Wednesday for the CIS Final Eight in Ottawa, March 6-10. It will be their first appearance at the CIS national tourney since 1979 and they will be bidding for their first-ever national title.
Combined with the McGill Martlets 51-48 home-court victory over Concordia in the Quebec women’s final earlier in the day, it marked the second time in school history that both McGill basketball teams had won a conference title in the same season, the other occurrence happening in 1985-86.
For the full men’s basketball story, click here.