Without a doubt the Queen’s Golden Gaels would like a strong start Friday night to make them forget a truly dreadful opening quarter in their last Ontario University Athletics women’s basketball game. That was Saturday, when the Gaels made just two of 21 attempts from the field and visiting Ryerson took a 23-5 lead, en route to a victory that ended a six-game Queen’s winning streak.

Ultimately the Gaels came back and lost to the nation’s No. 8 team by just eight points, but any sort of comback likely won't be so easy this time, they travel to Windsor for a game against the four-time defending national champion Lancers, who just so happen to be the No. 1-ranked team in Canada.

Oddly, the last time the Gaels endured such a difficult first quarter was the last time they played in Windsor, in the conference championship game a year ago. That night, they fell behind the Lancers 23-6 in the opening 10 minutes and never recovered.

The game will be a good test for the Gaels, whose winning streak had propelled them into second place in the East division. Of those six wins, however, only one came against a team with a record better than .500—last Friday’s overtime win against the Toronto Blues, with whom they had been tied for second.

Saturday, the Gaels will stop in London on their way home for a game against the 4-9 Western Mustangs.

• The Queen’s men, 4-8, will be making the same trip this weekend, facing Windsor, led by former Queen’s coach Chris Oliver, Friday night and Western, 8-5, on Saturday night. The Lancers, ranked fifth in Canada, bring an 8-4 record into Friday’s game, and they’ll be trying to right their ship after an 81-70 loss to Ottawa last weekend.

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St. Lawrence Vikings begin the most difficult part of their Ontario Colleges Athletic Association men’s basketball schedule Saturday afternoon at Loyalist in Belleville.

The Vikings, 10-5 and winners of eight in a row, may have a chance to move into a second-place tie with Georgian, 11-4, which Friday night plays in Oshawa against East division-leading Durham.

Loyalist, 9-6, is nipping at the Vikings’ heels in the tremendously close division, where eight teams still have a shot at one of the six playoff spots. St. Lawrence won’t close its schedule easily, as four of its five remaining games are against playoff-contending teams, including one each against Georgian and Durham.

Andrew Dawkins of the Vikings is the East division’s player of the week, thanks to a pair of 20 points plus performances last weekend, 21 points in St. Lawrence’s 73-72 win over Seneca—in a game where most of a five-point lead disappeared in the final 30 seconds as the Vikings narrowly held on to win—and 23 points against George Brown, as St. Lawrence won by four points in a game where the Vikings hit 13 three-point baskets.

• The St. Lawrence women, 11-1 and holding a half-game lead over second-place Algonquin, also play in Belleville Saturday afternoon. The Vikings held their No. 8 national rank with a pair of victories last weekend, both of which were kindled by dominant first quarters. St. Lawrence outscored Seneca 21-6 en route to a 55-34 win Friday, and a 21-4 first quarter against Brown on Saturday led to an 87-37 victory, one in which all 12 Vikings scored and Rebecca Orr and Adrianna Pinnock each had season-best 13-point performances.

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Following a game at home Tuesday in which they both blew a two-goal lead and overcame a two-goal deficit for a 6-4 win, Queen’s Golden Gaels will play the Laurentian Voyageurs in an Ontario University Athletics men’s hockey game Saturday night in Sudbury. The game is critical for the Gaels, if they wish to avoid Trois-Riviers, Carleton or McGill in the first round of playoffs.

To do so, the Gaels, 10-12-1 and currently sixth among the eight playoff-bound teams, will have to move at least into fifth place. Currently, they are two points ahead of seventh-place Ontario Tech, and they trail fifth-place Nipissing by four points and fourth-place Laurentian, 12-8-3, by six.

Queen’s, Laurentian and Nipissing each have three games remaining, and the Gaels could still move up.

To catch Laurentian, the Gaels must win all three of their games and Laurentian lose all three, and to break the tie that would ensue, Queen’s would have to win Saturday by at least three goals to regain the edge in the tie-breaker. That’s because the Voyageurs posted a 3-1 win in Kingston in late November in a game where the visitors scored twice in the final six minutes to break a 1-1 tie.

For Laurentian to lose all three of its remaining games, however, would mean that Nipissing would have won one of them, giving the Lakers at least 27 points. To catch Nipissing, Queen’s again would have to win all three of its games and hope the Lakers lose their other two—against Trois-Rivieres and Carleton. That would create a scenario where the Gaels and Lakers would end deadlocked and Queen’s would prevail in the tie breaker.

The only team in the division not weighing its playoff options, the Royal Military College Paladins, will try for their first win of the season Friday night at Constantine Arena against Toronto.

It’s been almost exactly a year since RMC won a hockey game, and the Paladins are coming off an 8-0 loss in the annual challenge game with the U.S. Military Academy. RMC, 0-18-3, last won a game on Feb. 6, 2014, 2-1 over Queen’s in the annual Carr-Harris Cup match.

Game time Friday is 7 p.m., as it will be Saturday when the Paladins host Ryerson, at 12-10-1 the fourth-place team in the West division.

• Queen’s women, who defeated Ontario Tech 5-2 Thursday in Oshawa, are idle this weekend. With the win, the Gaels improved to 14-3-3 and moved into sole possession of second place, one point behind Western; two points ahead of Toronto and Guelph and three points ahead of Windsor, all of which were idle Thursday.

In key games this weekend, Toronto visits Western Friday and Windsor on Saturday, while Guelph plays Laurier on Saturday.