Mike L’Africain scored 30 points Friday night to lead the No. 2-ranked Ottawa Gee-Gees to a 76-60 win over the Queen’s Golden Gaels in an Ontario University Athletics men’s basketball game in Ottawa.
The win was the 10th in 11 conference games for the North division-leading Gee-Gees, who held the Gaels to a season-low 60 points. Queen’s, 7-4 and the second-place team in the East division, lost for the third time in four post-Christmas games.
Sukhpreet Singh led Queen’s with 18 points. Jesse Graham added 11 points off the bench and Andrew Mavety scored six points and pulled down 11 rebounds.
Ottawa jumped to a 10-point lead by the time the game was five minutes old, and the Gee-Gees stretched that margin to 17 points in the second quarter. A 7-0 run to end the first half allowed the Queen’s to cut the deficit to nine points, 40-31.
L’Africain scored 20 of his 30 points in the second half, as the Ottawa lead was never threatened.
Holy Cross Secondary School grad Brody Maracle, who had his best game of the year—a 24-point performance arising from 11-for-13 shooting from the field—against Queen’s in October, scored 13 points Friday night for the Gee-Gees.
Ottawa shot 52.5 per cent from the field, while the Gaels languished at less than 32 per cent. The Gee-Gees scored 16 points from 19 Queen’s turnovers.
The Gaels will play their next game in Ottawa Saturday night, against the third-ranked Carleton Ravens.