By CLAUDE SCILLEY

Clearly, it was not a half of basketball Dave Wilson was proud of.

“Good,” he said, when a visitor mentioned he'd missed the early part of his team’s game at the Athletics and Recreation Centre Friday night.

Those early troubles, the ones that led to deficits of 14 and 17 points, ultimately just made the Queen’s Golden Gaels’ 79-77 overtime victory over the Toronto Blues that much more sweet.

As the Queen's women, 8-3, stretched their winning streak to six games, they moved four points ahead of Toronto, 6-5, in the quest for second place in the East division of Ontario University Athletics.

For a while, though, that eventuality seemed unlikely. Trailing 39-25 at one point in the second quarter, the Gaels closed to 10 points, 40-30, when Jenny Wright scored a three-point basket at the halftime buzzer.

The Blues scored 10 of the first 13 points of the second half, however, to lead by 17 points, 50-33, with 5:45 left in the third quarter. Queen’s was shooting poorly, not rebounding particularly well and even missed six of their first eight free throws of the second half.

Those problems were all secondary to defensive shortcomings that didn’t befit a team that had allowed an average of just 45.6 points in its previous five games.

“We struggled so badly with communication on defence,” Wilson said. “We were getting caught up in screens and when we were switching, two people were going to the ball, nobody to the roller; or two people were going to the roller, nobody to the ball, and we were so incredibly tight offensively.

“They played a little bit like scared kittens at the start of the game. They were all tight; shots were not anywhere close to going in, and that was just the hype, the pressure, that we didn’t handle very well at the start.”

At the point they fell behind by 17, Queen’s called time out, and when play resumed, the Blues began to put some serious pressure on the Gaels. As if because they suddenly had to wake up to cope with it, the Gaels came to life. An 11-3 run stopped the bleeding and Queen’s closed the period on a 9-3 spree that put the Gaels back in the ball game, trailing 58-53 going into the fourth quarter.

“We knew what they were going to do and we talked about it at halftime,” Wilson said. “We weren’t punishing them for their pressure. We were breaking it, but we weren’t punishing them, so we wanted to be more aggressive—not just advance the ball, we wanted to push it at the rim and see whether they could handle that.

“That’s when they got tentative about how much pressure they wanted to apply.”

Queen’s tied the game at 67-67 with 3:12 left when Gemma Bullard hit a pair of free throws. A basket by Emily Hazlett put Queen’s ahead a minute later but back-to-back baskets by Jill Stratton put Toronto back in front, 71-69.

A basket by Robyn Pearson of Queen’s tied the game with about 50 seconds left, and the Blues allowed the shot clock to expire on their next trip up the floor. Twenty-six seconds remained when the Gaels got the ball, but Liz Boag missed a layup with five seconds on the clock. Toronto didn’t get the ball down the floor for another attempt at a game-winning basket.

Queen’s raced to a five-point lead in overtime; the Blues closed to within two points with a minute left, but they could never catch up. Hazlett had four of Queen’s eight points in the extra period, and Pearson completed a three-point play to establish the initial five-point lead.

Hazlett led the Gaels with 18 points, Wright scored 13 and Pearson finished the game with 10 points and nine rebounds. The unsung performance came from Abby Dixon, who scored 15 points off the bench, all of them in the second half; 10 of them in the third quarter.

“That’s why we recruited her,” Wilson said. “A lot of people don’t actually see what she brings to the game as much as (I do), and that’s her off-ball defence; her ability to read passing lanes. She gets into passing lanes and disrupts things or steals the ball outright.

“Abby unleashed. After having a struggled game last week, she had a great week in practice and played with a lot of confidence. To be honest with you, it’s nothing special. It’s what she’s capable of, day in and day out.”

Stratton led all scorers with 30 points for Toronto and she had a game-high 11 rebounds. Rihshida Atkinson scored 17 points for the Blues.

The Gaels resume play tonight at the Athletics and Recreation Centre against division-leading Ryerson, at 6 o’clock.

•

The Queen’s men also staged a comeback Friday night, overcoming a 14-point first-quarter deficit en route to an 82-74 win over the Varsity Blues.

Freshman Tanner Graham, the La Salle Secondary School grad, had a superb game, with 24 points, 13 better than his previous career best. He also pulled down five rebounds.

Greg Faulkner, with 21 points, Sukhpreet Singh, with 14, and Ryall Stroud, with 12, also reached double figures for Queen’s. Singh led the team with eight rebounds.

Devin Johnson led all players with 25 points and 11 rebounds for Toronto, while Manny Sahota and Julian Clarke scored 16 points apiece for the Blues.

Toronto, 3-8, burst out of the gate, scoring 29 points in the first quarter, but the Blues managed just 23 points in the next two periods combined. The Gaels trailed 40-35 at halftime, but they took a 54-52 lead late in the third quarter on a pair of Tanner Graham free throws.

Queen’s retained the lead throughout the fourth quarter, and sealed the victory by sinking six of eight free throws at the end.

Queen’s, 4-7, resumes play Saturday night, when they host the No. 3 Ryerson Rams at 8 o’clock in the main ARC gym.