Ottawa, ON – The Mustangs will play for a bronze medal on Sunday after they dropped a 90-63 loss to the Carleton Ravens on Saturday evening at the 2020 U SPORTS National Championship.
"They came out strong, they're the best team in the country and they came to play," said Mustangs Guard Eriq Jenkins of the Ravens. "We got down a little bit early and just couldn't find a way to dig ourselves out of that hole."
The Mustangs struggled out of the gate for the second straight game as Carleton topped Western 21-14 in the 1st quarter.
"We definitely got off to a slow start and spotted them a ten-point lead and then fought back a little bit," said Mustangs Head Coach Brad Campbell "They sort of drew us into a few things and playing without Julian (Walker) kind of hurts too,"
The Mustangs found their touch in the 2nd quarter as they started to drive the paint a little more. Jenkins highlighted the frame, Nik Farkic handed the ball to him at the top of the arc, he drove the lane and went up and under with the lay-in. The Ravens again outscored the Mustangs 22-17 in the 2nd and the score sat at 43-31 Carleton at half time.
The Mustangs got themselves into foul trouble as Omar Shiddo was called for his 4th personal foul of the game early in the third quarter. This threw a swerve into the Mustangs game and they found themselves trailing again quickly with the Ravens outpacing the Mustangs 9-2 within the first 3 minutes of the 3rd.
To make matters worse, Jenkins left the game briefly in the 2nd half but said it isn't anything serious.
"Just wanted to make sure that I was good for tomorrow, so I went back and got checked out and everything looks good."
The Mustangs were able to pick things up in the 4th quarter, outscoring the Ravens 23-18 but the game was out of reach at that point and Carleton took the win, 90-63.
"We've got to flush that one and then get ready for tomorrow and get back to finding some confidence," said Campbell "We aren't very familiar with UBC as they're an out of conference opponent so we've got a lot of work to do in a short time to get ready."
The bronze medal game is set for Sunday afternoon at 2 pm. Fans can catch the action on CBCsports.ca, the CBC Sports app, and CBC Gem app.
