As year ends, the women’s team is starting to show their strength.

Going into the past two away games against Laurentian and York, the Gryphons women’s basketball coach, Tom O’Brien, knew that they had to start playing better basketball in the fourth quarter to win. Their past few losses were close calls, and it all came down to the team’s performance at the end of the game.

“We did that in the game against Laurentian and especially against York,” O’Brien said. “We needed to impose our will and we did in both cases.”

The first of the two games– which was against Laurentian– ended with a strong lead for the Gryphons who won 87-30. The victory over York came with a smaller margin, 73-65, but it was still a good sign for the team who are making progress in the area O’Brien hoped they would.

“If we had played the fourth quarter [last weekend] like we did on Saturday night [against York] we probably would have won one or two games.”

Those two games, however, are the last for the team for a while. Their next game isn’t until an exhibition game on Dec. 30 and the next regular season game isn’t until Jan. 4.

“We continue to have voluntary basketball workouts during exams and the players all have a conditioning program to follow right through the break,” said O’Brien on the team’s holiday hiatus. “The players will leave for home on Dec. 16 [and] we will resume on Dec. 27.”

When they resume there will be a few days of practices before their exhibition game and then the regular season resumes. Their first regular season games in January are against some of the toughest teams in their conference: Brock, Windsor and Western. All of them were in the conference’s top four last season. O’Brien is confident, however, that they will be able to keep their momentum going.

“The first two [games], against Brock and Windsor, are during the week before classes start. This will allow the players to focus strictly on basketball without having to worry about classes,” he explained. “We will also have more time to prepare. They will be tough games but all of us believe that we can compete with any of these teams. Our games last weekend helped our confidence and our team chemistry.”

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