NAIT’s basketball teams tipped off their season this weekend, with the men’s and women’s home opener on Friday, Oct. 25. The beginning of the new season signaled a fresh start for the team; they faced off against the Keyano College Huskies, who snatched their playoff spot in a tiebreaker last season.
In Friday night’s game, the Ooks fell behind early. Keyano led NAIT 16-5 after the first quarter thanks to Jaylynn Twin’s 7-point performance for the Huskies. NAIT responded in the second quarter; Payton Neilson and Dior Sellars combined for 11 of the Ooks’ 20 points, cutting Keyano’s lead to 34-25 at halftime.
At the end of the third, the Huskies regained the lead, but the blue and gold were still in it, with the score sitting at 48-39. Unfortunately, that would be the closest NAIT got to taking the lead. Keyano posted 16 points in the final quarter and cruised to a 64-50 win over the Ooks in their home opener.
The blue and gold’s lack of offence in the first and fourth quarters—where they scored five and 11 points—ended up costing them in the end.
Early in Saturday’s game, NAIT was neck and neck with Keyano going into the second quarter. The Ooks led 20-18 early in the second from a pair of free throws by Payton Neilson, but a run of missed shots allowed the Huskies to mount a comeback. Keyano regained the lead at 32-22 and closed the first half up 43-32.
NAIT didn’t go away quietly, though. The Ooks fought back with an 8-0 run at the start of the third quarter and cut the deficit to 48-46. But the Huskies responded with a run of their own and ended the quarter up 62-51. NAIT couldn’t make up the lost ground, and Keyano added 18 more points in the fourth quarter to defeat the Ooks 80-64 and leave the blue and gold winless on opening weekend. The loss was challenging, but Head Coach Kyra Lyons knows that once the Ooks find ways to score consistently, they’ll earn that first win.
“On Friday, we had a really slow start and put ourselves in a hole which was really hard to dig ourselves out of,” Head Coach Kiera Lyons said after the loss on Saturday in a post-game interview with the Nugget. “Today, we had confidence, and I was proud of the way we bounced back. We just need to be able to put that [effort] together for 40 minutes, and we just weren’t able to do that.”
“We’ve put in a lot of new structured offences, and the way that we’re playing is a little bit different than we have in the past. The improvement from Sept. 1 to now has been substantial … we just have to trust the process and keep building day by day.”
