The University of Regina's women's basketball team returns to the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport this weekend for its first Canada West home games since late November, as the Cougars host Alberta on both Friday and Saturday night.
It'll be a matchup with plenty of implications for the upper half of the Pioneer Division standings. The Cougars enter the weekend at 10-4 and 1½ games back of first-place Alberta, but with two teams in between – Saskatchewan and UBC, both with 9-3 records – and Victoria and Winnipeg both lurking at 6-6 with favourable schedules, it could shape up to be a wild finish.
The Cougars entered last weekend riding a 10-game Canada West winning streak, but that came to an end with 73-56 and 63-40 road losses at No. 5-ranked Saskatchewan. The losses overshadowed
Jennilea Coppola becoming the school's all-time leader in blocked shots, as the fifth-year post moved past Chelsea Cassano with blocks on back-to-back possessions in Friday's game.
The U of R's starting five will likely consist of Coppola, scoring leader
Charlotte Kot (14.1 points per game), rebounding leader
Alyssia Kajati (13.1 ppg, 7.9 rebounds per game), perimeter threat
Katie Polischuk (12.4 ppg), and point guard
Kehlsie Crone (9.3 ppg, 5.0 assists per game). With just 10 healthy players on the roster, ninth-year head coach
Dave Taylor has made heavy use of
Christina McCusker,
Caitlin Zacharias,
Sara Hubenig, and
Taylor Pelletier off the bench with rookie
Britton Belyk also seeing action in 12 of 14 games so far during the conference schedule.
Alberta comes in on a three-game winning streak including two home wins by 20-plus points over Manitoba last weekend. The Pandas' player to watch is Saskia Van Ginhoven, a 6-1 fifth-year post who ranks fifth in Canada West in both points per game (15.8) and rebounds per game (8.6). Jessilyn Fairbanks and Sally Hillier also average in double figures for Alberta, with Fairbanks at 12.3 points per game and Hillier at 11.2.
These two games will mark the first time the Cougars and the Pandas have met since last year's Canada West bronze medal game in Edmonton which saw Alberta come away with a low-scoring 55-50 win.
After the Alberta games, the Cougars will have a weekend off before closing out the Canada West schedule with two more home games against UBC (Feb. 6/7) and a pair of away matchups at Winnipeg (Feb. 13/14).
