The University of Regina's men's basketball team put a nice finishing touch on the conference schedule, holding off Saskatchewan for an 81-76 road win as both teams played their final Canada West game of the season on Saturday night in Saskatoon.
Interestingly enough, for the second consecutive night the turning point of the game came after the score was tied up at 66-66 in the fourth quarter. In Friday night's game, it was Saskatchewan going on a 20-5 run to run away with it. But on Saturday, the Cougars took control after that 66-66 tie by scoring 11 of the next 13 points to go up by nine points with two and a half minutes to go.
Saskatchewan got back to within four points with 22 seconds to go, but the Cougars hit a free throw and forced a late turnover to seal the win.
The Cougars (11-9) will now prepare to host a Canada West play-in game against Thompson Rivers this Thursday night (7:00) at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport. If Regina wins that game, the Cougars will advance to a best-of-three conference quarterfinal series at Lethbridge the following weekend.
Saturday's game saw fifth-year veteran
Brandon Tull lead the Cougars with a 20-point effort in his final Canada West game. Tull passed current assistant coach Joel Hunter and Chris Biegler on the U of R's all-time scoring list during Friday's game, and finishes fourth in Cougar history with an impressive total of 1391 career points.
Besides Tull's 20 points, the Cougars had three players chip in with 12 apiece –
Shaquille Harris,
Samuel Hillis, and
Brian Ofori. Ofori added 11 rebounds for a double-double.
Saskatchewan's Lawrence Moore piled up 43 points in the loss. The Huskies finish with a 10-10 Canada West record and will host Victoria in another Canada West play-in game.
NOTES: The two other play-in games will feature Brandon at Manitoba and UNBC squaring off with Winnipeg ... besides Lethbridge, first-round byes were also earned by Alberta, Calgary, and UBC.
