LONDON, Ont. - After a tough start to 2015 on the road, the Western Mustangs women's basketball team were happy to return home and even happier to walk away with an 80-70 victory over the Waterloo Warriors at Alumni Hall, Saturday afternoon.
With the win, the Mustangs snap a four game losing streak and improve to 3-8 on the season. Waterloo shares the same 3-8 record, putting both teams in third in the OUA West Division standings.
Mackenzie Puklicz had a career game, scoring a personal best 30 points which included three 3-pointers and 11 of 14 free throws. She also picked up 13 rebounds and stripped the ball for four steals. The hometown guard cites the Mustangs' preseason loss at the hands of the Warriors as inspiration for her performance.
"They beat us in the preseason when we had players out," she said. "I didn't play and I took it personally. I was like, 'Hey you beat us, but don't think you're going to come in here and win again.'"
It was also a big game for Caroline Wolynski, who scored a career-high 20 points and grabbed seven rebounds off the glass.
"She works really hard," Puklicz said of her teammate. "We had some nice passes to each other and it worked and it looked good. From now on I think we need to remind ourselves of how we played this time."
Western came out strong in the first quarter with high-energy and ball movement. While they've had trouble making offensive impacts early in games this season, those struggles seemed to be behind them when they put up a score of 17-13 after the first frame.
The Warriors were kept on their toes with the ball movement in the second quarter. With 2:54 left to play, Puklicz grabbed a defensive rebound and lobbed to Julia Tennant, who dished out to Maddy Horst for a good jumper in the paint. This style of play helped the Mustangs maintain a 32-26 lead at the end of the first half.
It was the third quarter where the Mustangs broke out. Puklicz scored 12 of Western's 26 points in the third quarter in a high-energy run that saw them pull ahead 58-41.
That energy carried through into the fourth quarter, but the Warriors responded in kind. Waterloo outscored the Mustangs 29-22 in the fourth and climbed within six points with 50 seconds left on the clock. The Warriors turned to successive fouling against the Mustangs to keep them in check, but the squad remained resilient to come out ahead 80-70 for their first win at home for the season.
Head coach Brian Cheng said his team spent the week working on defense, which was the backbone of the victory.
"It started from point one," said Cheng. "We came out with a mentality to defend. We were just playing and making sure that if we didn't score we did a good job of making sure they didn't score. I think that mentality stuck through."
The Mustangs play both of their games next week at home against Ottawa on Friday, January 23, and Carleton on Saturday, January 24. Both games tip off at 6 p.m. and can be watched live on OUA.tv.
