Fourth straight loss shuts door on playoffs, season

Posted by admin on Feb 16, 2010 in Sports | 0 comments

On Saturday, the men’s basketball season came to a premature ending, as the boys were downed 90-83 by #1 UBC, ending their playoff hopes in their season finale.

Two weeks ago, the Spartans sat at 9-5, needing to win one of their final four games to clinch a playoff spot. Four straight losses, however, including Saturday’s ended those hopes, leaving the Spartans at 9-9, and on the outside looking in at the playoffs. The Spartans were without starting forward Tyrell Mara, fourth-year, for all of the their final four games.

“It’s really disappointing [to miss playoffs] – especially to our seniors,” says fourth-year forward Lance Veerhoeff. “We tried to pull it out against UBC, but they’re a really good team. Most of our losses this year have been because of our own mistakes, but UBC won that game.”

With the loss, the Spartans’ lose graduating seniors Jason Keegstra, Louis Hurd and Joe Vroom.

Aside from the emersion of red-shirt freshman Tonner Jackson in the late part of the season and the consistent standout play of Jacob Doerksen, the Spartans’ underachieved all year. After the second week of the season, the Spartans’ carried a #10 ranking nationally, but quickly fell out of the top ten as the losses mounted. By the end of the season, the Spartans weren’t worried about a national ranking, but merely a playoff spot.

“I think the quality of teams was higher this year in Canada West,” says head coach Scott Allen. “That’s one thing that made making playoffs harder this year. The other was that we didn’t have Tyrell, our best defender, for our last five games. Trying to make an adjustment to that this late was pretty tough on us. I’m proud of how our team handled everything.”

Going into next season, the Spartans return their entire starting frontcourt – Mara, Doersksen, and Veerhoeff, as well as starting shooting guard Calvin Westbrook, who’s play strongly improved from his first game of the season to his last.

In the last two years, the Spartans have ultimately been hurt by their lack of a true point guard. After trying Westbrook in the role at the beginning of the season, head coach Scott Allen rotated Louis Hurd and Daniel Horner in the role, but with the loss of Hurd, Horner will now be competing with red-shirt transfer Tristan Smith, who starred at Fraser Valley before sitting out last season, and incoming freshman Eli Mara, younger brother of Tyrell, and currently a senior at White Rock Christian Academy.

As for Allen’s experiment of carrying a 22-player roster, he doesn’t plan on repeating it. “Having that big a roster gave people more experience, but we’re going to make next year’s roster a little smaller. Probably around 15 guys next year,” says Allen.

In addition to Smith and Eli Mara, the Spartans will also be welcoming in transfer Kyle Coston, a teammate of Tyrell Mara’s at Portland State before sitting out this past year, as well as 6’11 freshman Lucas Nugteren.

For the Spartan Faithful, the season followed a familiar roadmap of lofty expectations and a failure to deliver on the court, but Allen is hoping hard work in the off-season can help his team by this time next year.

“This off-season the key will be having everyone do what they can in order to get better. We’re going to be hitting the weight room, practicing 3-4 time a week, and keeping out guys around this off-season to do that.”