Photo by Udantha Chandre @ucephoto
The Memorial Sea-Hawks (6-6) hit the road today to face the Saint Mary's Huskies (7-5) for a pair of important 4-point games. Despite every team in the conference qualifying for the AUS championship, these games are pivotal for playoff seeding. The Sea-Hawks have 18 points thanks to consecutive 4-point game victories in the middle of February versus the StFX X-Men. The Huskies are winless in their three 4-point games thus far, leaving them with 14 points.
The Sea-Hawks are currently situated in a tied for 3rd place in the AUS standings and have the potential to make their way even further up the standings with 8-points on the line this weekend. The Sea-Hawks dropped a pair of tight games last weekend in Cape Breton against the Capers, by scores of 90-82 and 90-85 in overtime, they will look to get back into the win column. Over the month of February, Boris Ristanovic has enjoyed a tremendous stretch of play, leading the entire team in points-per-game during that stretch (22.3) while staying efficient, shooting 56.1% from the field and 50.0% from three-point range. The duo Ristanovic and Long have created as bigs is creating problems for other teams. Over the past month Cole Long's shooting has been at trending upwards, he continues to put up solid numbers with spectacular efficiency in the month of February, in 4 games Long averaged 19.3 points-per-game on 50.0% shooting from the field, and a remarkable 47.8% from three-point range. Long's prolific efficiency and impact on both ends of the court will be front and center once again this week.
The host Saint Mary's Huskies head into this weekend sitting in 6th place in the AUS, with the potential to climb up the standings with a pair of good performances. The Huskies were able to capture a sweep of the Acadia Axemen by scores of 93-68 and 76-74, and will look to continue their winning ways. The Huskies have been one of the premier scoring teams in the conference this season, scoring an average of 84.3 points-per-game. This is thanks to some impressive scoring from multiple different contributing players. Throughout the course of the season so far, the Huskies are the only team to have 3 players produce over 16 points-per-game, Qyemah Gibson (19.2), Jace Colley (16.4), and Nikita Kasongo (16.2) have all been able to find ways to score the ball. This high-flying Huskies attack will attempt to continue their tremendous offensive output.
The first game between the two teams will take place on Saturday, March 5th at 8:00 PM AST, while the series finale taking place on Sunday, March 6th at 2:00 PM AST.
Sports Writer Daniel Bruce