Ut TiC

By Nick Macewen

78 win. Western was led by strong outside

with Adam Connolly shooting with guards

It was a big weekend for the third ranked St. Francis Xavier X-Men as they fought their way into the finals of the CIAU National Champion- ships and managed to pull out a last second victory to claim the school’s second na- tional championship. This was also the sec- ond straight year that an AUAA team has won the CIAU’s with a victory by Saint Mary’s last year.

The first day of tournament action started off with a huge upset as the number eight seed Brandon Bobcats knocked off the number one ranked team, the Alberta Golden Bears 73-57. This was a back-and -forth game that wasn’t decided until the last couple of min- utes when Brandon really started to pull away. The Bobcats were led by the senior forward Earnest Bell who had 31 points and 11 rebounds. Ryan Baldry led the Golden Bears with 15 points.

The second game featured the fourth ranked Western Mustangs against the fifth ranked Laurentian Voyageurs. Western jumped out to an early 27-7 lead and never looked back as they rolled to an easy 90-

Jim Grozelle and Micah Bordeau scor- ing 23 and 21 points respectively. The Voyageurs were led by Kevin Gordon who had 31 points and All Canadian Centre Ted Dongelmans, who had 20 points.

The third game saw the second ranked Lethbridge Pronghorns jump out to a quick lead against the seventh ranked Concordia Stingers. Lethbridge had trouble holding off the pesky Stingers. Whenever Lethbridge would start to pull away, Concordia would battle back and keep things close, only to have Lethbridge in- crease the gap in the last five minutes to eventually defeat Concordia 90-77. Lethbridge was led by Spencer Holt with 19 points and by CIAU player of the year who finished with 16 points

and bl rebounds: Concordia was led by Eric Zulu with 26 points and Wayne Alexander who had 19 points and 16 boards in a losing cause.

The last game of the opening day saw the third ranked St. FX X-Men hold off the sixth ranked McMaster Marauders 82-79. The X-Men held a comfortable fourteen point lead in the second half, only to see that lead shrink to three in the last five minutes. McMaster came up just short on a last second three pointer as St. FX hung on to win by three. The X-Men were led by Randy Nohr and Fred Perry who had 20 points each in the win. McMaster was led by Graham Hewitt and Steve Maga who each had 21 points in the loss.

The Alberta Golden Bears had an easy time with Laurentian in the first of the consolation semi- finals. Alberta pulled

X-Men continued on page 21

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