By CLAUDE SCILLEY

It was perhaps his team’s most important victory of the season but Barry Smith just couldn’t bring himself to celebrate it.

“It was a big win for us. I should feel euphoric,” said the coach of the St. Lawrence Vikings, after his team posted a convincing 88-70 win over the East-division leading Durham Lords in an Ontario Colleges Athletic Association men’s basketball game Wednesday night.

“But they always seem to take away my happiness.”

It was the Vikings’ 10th win in a row and it put them solidly in second place, two points behind Durham, which lost for just the third time in 17 games. In spite of all that Smith was shaking his head over a scrap that happened late in the third quarter, one that led to the ejection of three players, two from St. Lawrence.

Once that happened, the Vikings were left with just one man on the bench—little used freshman Steve Houston. Not only did that mean the other five Vikings had to play all of the remaining 13 minutes, it means that when the team goes to northern Ontario for games in 10 days, they’ll do so with just those six players, since Shaqeem Downey and Donald Gibson, the two Vikings ejected, will each be suspended for at least one game.

“We lost our discipline,” Smith lamented. “Two guys get into a big scrum, throw punches, and get thrown out of the game, and that’s going to come back to haunt us. Now we’re going to North Bay with six players.

“We preach all the time: discipline, discipline, discipline. If you go out there and break up the scrum (that’s one thing), but if you throw punches the referees have got to do something.”

The incident began with 2:50 remaining in the third quarter and St. Lawrence leading 65-50. After missing a shot, Durham’s Ajahmo Clarke, a former St. Lawrence player, stuck out his arm and clotheslined St. Lawrence’s Jaz Bain as Bain brought the ball up the floor, sending the Viking into the wall near the timer’s bench.

St. Lawrence players dashed to Bain’s aid and a melee ensued near the Durham bench. Referees intercepted a handful of fans who bolted from the stands before they could get near the players and coaches from both teams worked to drag their players out of the pile.

It was about 15 minutes before the officials sorted things out and the game resumed, with one man left on the Vikings’ bench and two on the Durham bench.

“It wasn’t a heated game up until then,” Smith said. “It was an intense game, but it wasn’t a heated game,” and it had been a relatively penalty-free game to that point, as neither side had a man in foul trouble at the time of the outburst.

The teams set a sweltering pace at the start of the game. It was 10-10 before two minutes had been played. A three-point basket by Andrew Dawkins at the first-quarter buzzer left St. Lawrence trailing 24-22.

Down by six points, 32-26 early in the third quarter, Smith called time out and apparently what he had to say registered with his players, who went on a 19-4 run—a stretch that included 10 straight points near the end of the period—and St. Lawrence led 47-40 at the intermission. The Vikings’ lead was 15 points going into the final quarter and grew to as many as 21 with five minutes to play.

Despite a 10-2 run after that, the Lords never really threatened to catch up.

“We had a game plan and I thought we executed it fairly well,” Smith said. “They’re a high scoring team and what we were trying to do was stop their two top scorers, and what we said to the other three guys on the floor was if 22 (Clarke) or 23 (Eric Smith) got the ball, we were going to try to dig down and stop those guys and make them give the ball up.

“We did a so-so job on it. We seemed to pick up the intensity in the third quarter and then all hell broke lose. I don’t know if our game plan would have worked because that drastically changed the game. We couldn’t play man (defence) anymore because we’ve only got six guys and Steve shouldn’t really be playing, so it means we’ve only got five guys and I had to leave them out there and go to the zone.”

Partly because of that, and partly because of the residual implications of the skirmish, Smith said it was difficult to coach the remainder of the game.

“It was very challenging,” he said, “because I’m trying not to think about the secondary thing, I’m thinking about let’s finish the game and win it, but then I am thinking about what are we going to do when we go to North Bay with six players.

“I guess I’ll have to worry about that over the next week; see if we can come up with some tricks.”

He paused.

“I’ve still got eligibility,” he mused, “(but) that’d slow the game down, wouldn’t it?”

The scrap detracted from three quite impressive elements of the St. Lawrence victory. First, not only was it the Vikings’ 10th win in a row, it came at the expense of the 12th-ranked team in Canada, the only ranked team in the East division.

Second, despite a distinct height disadvantage, the Vikings held their own under the basket, outrebounded just 38-37. St. Lawrence was led by an amazing performance by Brad Richards, who had a game-best 15 rebounds, 12 of them under the defensive glass, where Durham managed just 10 rebounds altogether.

It was a season-best rebounding night for Richards, whose previous best was seven, against George Brown Nov. 29.

As well, the Vikings had a remarkable game from Dawkins. The man whose four straight three-pointers fueled the comeback that reversed a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit at Loyalist on Saturday, was 8-for-10 from beyond the arc Wednesday and finished with 38 points.

It was a season-best performance for Dawkins, who has hit 27 three-pointers in his last four games, and surpassed 20 points for the fifth time in his last six games.

Bains added 24 points and Gibson scored 14 before he was thrown out of the game.

Clarke had 18 points when he was excused and that stood as the best among the Lords, who got 14 points from Darian Rowe and 12 from Smith.

• The division-leading St. Lawrence women weren’t seriously challenged in their game Wednesday night, as they defeated Durham 91-54 for their eighth win in a row. The Vikings, 13-1, came out with zeal, scoring 26 points in the first quarter. They put the game away with 33 points in the third quarter.

Jackie Rodgerson scored 24 points, most of them thanks to 5-for-6 shooting from three-point territory, to lead St. Lawrence, which also got double-digit scoring from Sammy Gourdier (17 points), Lacey Knox (15) and Abby Heron (12).

For Rodgerson, a 9.1 points-per-game player who came off the bench Wednesday, it was a season-best performance by 11 points.

Lindsay Panchan, who took more shots (21) than the rest of her teammates combined (15), led Durham with 32 points.