Broncos 91 Kings 81
The RDC Kings still have their sights set on first place in the Alberta Colleges Men’s Basketball League South Division, but they made it harder on themselves after giving one away to the Olds Broncos Thursday.
The Kings led most of the way, even holding a 13-point lead late in the third quarter, before they fell apart both offensively and defensively. The Broncos, who are one of the premier offensive teams in the league broke it open scoring 26 points in the third quarter and 31 in the fourth to take a 91-81 victory at RDC.
“After getting an early lead we weren’t able to keep our defensive focus or our offensive pressure and let it slowly unravel,” said Kings head coach Clayton Pottinger. “We were still in it after the third quarter, despite giving up 26, but instead of bearing down defensively we let it loose and compounded it by doing nothing on the offensive end either. We imploded.”
The Kings led 23-14 after the first quarter and 46-34 at the half. They led by 13 with two minutes remaining in the third quarter before letting down defensively and allowing the Broncos to score seven straight points and trail only 66-60.
The fourth quarter was all Olds, who took the lead behind the outside shooting of Anthony Heintzman, and never let up.
In the first half the Kings were able to use the inside scoring of Matt Matear and the outside shooting of Anthony Ottley. But the second half Olds did a better job on Ottley and the Kings did little to get the ball inside to Matear or Shayne Stumpf.
“The problem is we rely on Anthony to score and when things get tough we don’t execute as a team. I thought we had worked that out over the last couple of weeks, but obviously not,” said Pottinger.
Ottley finished with 24 points while Matear had 18 points and 12 rebounds, JP LeBlanc 14 points and Matt Johnson 11. Heintzman had 23 points, leaguer scoring leader Wayne Tucker 18, John Dumetz 14 and Shaquille Bedminster 13 for Olds.
The loss dropped the Kings to 13-5 while Olds is at 14-4. Medicine Hat is 12-5. The Kings have three games remaining, including a return meeting with the Broncos Saturday in Olds.
“We have to gear up, make a few adjustment tomorrow and see what we can do,” said Pottinger.
Broncos 79 Queens 63
The Queens, much like the Kings, had a poor second half. They led 38-36 at the break, but were outscored 24-12 in the third quarter and 19-13 in the fourth.
“Every game we seem to have one quarter that gets away from us,” said Queens head coach Ken King. “We talked at half about not having that bad quarter, so what do we do come out and have a bad third quarter.”
The Broncos transition game did the Queens in. The Broncos were able to control their defensive boards and got down court on a number of occasions before the RDC defence was close to being ready.
“For the most part we a good job on them in the first quarter but the transition game hurt us and we had no help side defence. No one stepped up and were willing to take the charge,” said King. “As well turnover hurt. We’d do a good job defensively and then get complacent and give the ball back to them.”
What also hurt the Queens was when starting point guard Eva Bonde picked up four fouls in the first half.
Emily White had 18 points, eight rebounds,, two assists and three blocks for the Queens while Kenendy Burgess had 18 points and Dedra Janvier 11.
Ronika Ransford came into the game averaging 36.5 points per game, finished with 25 and the majority of those came when she drove the lane in the third quarter. Brianna Scott had 24 points and Sierra Harty 11.
The loss left the Queens at 7-11 while Olds moved to 8-10. SAIT is fourth at 10-8.