The Simon Fraser men's basketball team seemed to have all the elements of perfect, game-winning script at their disposal on Saturday at the Langley Events Centre.
 
There was a scrappy, resourceful and altogether successful first half of play which sent the Red Leafs to their halftime locker room with the lead.
 
And then there was the emergence of the team's newest star in talented freshman guard Irish Coquia (Vancouver).
 
Yet if there is one thing which has dogged SFU over the first two days at the CCA Div. II Canadian Tip-Off Classic, it's been the team's inability to write a final page worthy of its opening chapters.
 
On Friday, it was its own shutout defence and game-opening 12-0 run which was ultimately wasted in a 65-57 loss to Hawaii Hilo.
 
And on Saturday, it was its inability to build on a 39-34 halftime lead against the Buffalo, NY-based Daemen Wildcats which led to a 71-66 loss in a contest in which Coquia, the former St. Patrick Celtics high school star, almost single handedly pulled his team out of the fire behind his late heroics.
 
As Red Leafs' head coach Steve Hanson summed afterwards, it was pretty much that simple.
 
"Just everything we did in the first half, we didn't do in the second half," said Hanson after his team fell to 0-2 ahead of SFU's final game Sunday (5:15 p.m.) against the St. Edward's Hilltoppers from Austin, Texas. "That was getting to the line and playing tough. We didn't play tough enough in the second half and that's just unfortunate. It's there. We're doing good things. But we're just not finishing."
 
But what a last page it still turned out to be, complete with an ending that the pure freshman Coquia will likely get a chance to re-write several times over his Red Leafs' career.
 
"It was good to see Irish do what we see in practice every day," said Hanson after Coquia led four Red Leafs in double figures with 17 points. "This is a big confidence builder for him. He guarded the ball the full 90 feet the whole game and that is a good sign for us."
 
Coquia also showed that same ability to hit shots he showed in leading St. Pat's to B.C. championship titles in the same LEC complex.
 
Daemen led 65-58 with 1:03 remaining after Red Leafs' guard-forward Immanuel Oludele (Niagara Falls, Ont.) and Wildcats' guard Andrew Mason traded triples.
 
With 39 seconds remaining, however, Coquia's elbow jumper drew SFU to within 65-60.
 
While Simon Fraser was forced to foul with impunity the rest of the way, Coquia kept making the kinds of shots that wouldn't let the curtain close.
 
He first nailed a three-pointer with 12 seconds remaining to close the gap to 66-63. After Daemen's Andrew Mason and Justin Glover each sunk a pair of free throws to extend the Wildcats' lead to 70-63, he sunk another triple with 2.1 seconds remaining to make it 70-66.
 
"That was a good team we played," acknowledged Hanson of Daemen, as Dylan Fasoyiro led four of his teammates in double figures with 18 points. Nick MacDonald had 15, while Mason added 13 and Glover 12.
 
Oludele and Georges Lefebvre (Montreal) had 11 points apiece, Elliot Dimaculagan (Mississauga, Ont.) had 10 points and David Penney (Guelph, Ont.) another nine.

Tickets: https://www.showpass.com/ncaa-division-ii-canadian-tip-off-classic