Box Score Lacey, WA - The Simon Fraser University women's basketball team, the second ranked team in the NCAA West Region, lost 60-40 to the number one ranked Western Washington Vikings in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championship game on
Saturday.
"When your best players aren't your best players you get results like that," said Head Coach
Bruce Langford. "We're going to need to learn from this if we get into the national tournament next week because if we don't we'll be one and done."
The Clan were outscored 27-16 in the first half, getting into an early hole and while the offence improved in the second half, SFU was still outscored 33-24, resulting in the 20-point loss.
Western Washington scored the opening bucket of the game, and would lead from start to finish.
Turnovers hurt Simon Fraser as the Vikings outscored the Clan 20-10 off of turnovers. Bench play was relatively even as the Clan were outscored 16-12, and SFU outscored the Vikings on second chance points, 10-9.
Nayo Raincock-Ekunwe (Toronto, ON) led the Clan, scoring 12 points and a game high 14 rebounds. Eight of her 12 points came from the charity stripe, as she was a perfect eight for eight from the free throw line.
Katie Lowen (Lethbridge, AB) was second on the Clan in points and rebounds, with eight and five respectively.
Trishi Willianms led the Vikings offence with 16 points while Britt Harris had nine and led the team with eight rebounds.
Trailing by 11 at the half, the Clan came out in the second half looking to cut into the Vikings lead.
SFU did just that, scoring the first five points of the half to cut WWU's lead to six, but that was as close as SFU would get, as the Vikings put distance between themselves and the Clan the rest of the way.
The loss wraps up the Clan's conference schedule and SFU will now wait until
Sunday to find out their post season fate when the final NCAA brackets are released.
