By CLAUDE SCILLEY
St. Lawrence Vikings have heard the epistle from their coaches many times this year.
“Kevin (Smart) and I have preached that we’re going to win games by defence more than we’re going to win them by offence,” Barry Smith said.
The preacher admitted, though, that it’s a tough to convert a team to the gospel of defence when it can come out and score 100 points in a game, as it did Saturday afternoon in a 100-54 win over the Sir Sandford Fleming Knights in an Ontario Colleges Athletic Association basketball game in a frosty St. Lawrence gym.
“We’re trying to improve our defence, but we’ve got some scorers on the team and they think that we can outscore the other team all the time,” Smith said.
“Our goal has always been to hold teams to 60 points, and we’ve had a little more success that way, but it’s hard to get (the players) to buy into it, because it’s, ‘Ah, coach, if they score, we’ll just outscore them the next time down the court.’”
It’s been a tale of two seasons for the Vikings, who endured a four-game losing streak early in the season and were 2-5 before embarking on a win streak that reached four games with Saturday’s victory. A team that gave up more than 80 points in its first four games—and never fewer than 71 in the first six—has hit Smith’s target three times in the last five games, averaging 61.6 points against per game in that stretch.
The win boosted the Vikings, 6-5, into a five-way tie for fourth place in the East division standings, two games behind third-place Centennial.
Fleming, 0-11, led the game 11-6 at one point, and a 10-0 run to start the second quarter drew the Knights to 26-25 as it took almost five minutes for the Vikings to register their first point of the period.
St. Lawrence led 32-27 when Fleming was assessed a technical foul. Jaz Bains made both free throws and the Vikings scored on the subsequent possession for a nine-point lead. The visitors never got closer than that.
In a frigid gym—the furnace conked on Thursday but amid the cold weather outside nobody really noticed until Saturday morning—the Vikings got a 35-point performance from second-year man Donald Gibson.
It was perhaps odd that Gibson, from Freeport, in the Bahamas, would have perhaps the best scoring day of his career on an afternoon when players were running down the court blowing on their hands and spectators were wearing their winter coats indoors and going outside to get warm.
Fleming simply didn’t have an answer for the husky 6-foot-6 forward, who had 12 points in the first quarter and 15 in the third before coming out of the game early in the final period.
“We recruited him two years ago, when we saw him in a tournament in Ottawa,” Smith said. “He’s a loveable guy. Everybody in the school likes him: his teammates, the girls team, anybody around the gym.
“He’s one of those guys, he’s very easy going and it’s pretty hard not to like him. I’d like to see him work a little bit harder but, of course, I always like to see everybody work a little harder.”
Gibson also pulled down nine rebounds.
“(Fleming) didn’t have anybody that could come close to stopping him,” Smith said.
Bains finished the game with 26 points for St. Lawrence, a performance that included 6-for-7 foul shooting. Brad Richards added 14 points to the winning attack while Thomas Aufleger came off the bench to score 10, all in the second half.
Daniel Gordon scored 25 points to lead Fleming.
The Vikings resume play Friday night, when they will entertain La Cité at 8 p.m. Saturday afternoon St. Lawrence will host perennial rival Algonquin, one of the teams with which they’re tied in the standings.
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In the women’s game Saturday, St. Lawrence scored 36 straight points during one stretch in the first half, and they went on to rout winless Fleming 85-16.
Sammy Gourdier led the Vikings with 18 points, while Lacey Knox scored 17 as St. Lawrence improved to 8-1. Jackie Rodgerson recorded seven steals and scored 13 points.
The Vikings resume play next Saturday afternoon, when they host East division-leading Algonquin at 1 p.m.
