Brandon Tull's bucket with 19 seconds to go helped give the University of Regina's men's basketball team a tough 80-76 road win over UNBC on Friday night in Prince George, B.C.
With the teams knotted at 76, Tull ripped down an offensive rebound in the lane and went back up with a contested one-hander which would turn out to be the game-winning basket.
On the ensuing UNBC possession, the Timberwolves inbounded but James Agyeman was immediately whistled for an over-and-back violation to give the ball back to the Cougars.
Samuel Hillis hit one of two free throws after UNBC fouled to put the Cougars up three, and Regina survived a late three-point attempt by a wide-open Daniel Stark to escape with the win.
"I thought we competed well with the necessary energy, but we weren't as sharp tonight mentally as we need to be," Cougars head coach
Steve Burrows said. "We'll need to work on doing a better job of keeping guys in front of us defensively, and they did a great job of attacking the offensive glass and we weren't able to respond there. We'll attempt to clean those two things up tomorrow."
Regina's bench was lethal in the win as Hillis,
Shaquille Harris,
Nigel Warden, and
Brayden Kuski combined to shoot 11-for-15 from the field. Three of them hit double figures in scoring, led by Hillis with 13 points to go along with seven rebounds. Kuski added 11 points in his 17 minutes on the floor, while Harris scored 10 in 14 minutes played.
Tull finished with a team-leading 16 points for the Cougars, while
Shawn Lathan finished up with 12 including a pair of late free throws after the Stark miss that put the game out of reach.
Brian Ofori had eight points and a team-high eight rebounds, while Igual also had eight points and helped out on the glass with seven rebounds.
UNBC's offence went through Jovan Leamy and Marcus MacKay. Leamy had 24 points and a game-high 10 rebounds for the lone double-double of the night, while MacKay finished with 19 points. UNBC falls to 2-5 with the loss.
Now winners of four consecutive games, the Cougars (4-1) will go for the weekend sweep on Saturday night (7:00 PST) in Prince George.
