VANCOUVER – Trinity Western's women's basketball team trailed by just two points at halftime against UBC, but a third-quarter Thunderbirds run turned the tides towards the home side as UBC outscored the Spartans 23-8 to open a 17-point gap on route to a 77-53 win Friday.

The Spartans (1-2) held a 35-32 lead late in the first half, but UBC (1-2) pushed back to go up 37-35 at the break before exploding in the third quarter.

TWU was led by Jessie Brown (Langley, B.C.), who had 15 points while Tessa Ratzlaff (Abbotsford, B.C.) added 10 points. Luca Schmidt (Langley) had a team-high seven rebounds.

The T-Birds Kara Spotten had a game-high 26 points and nine rebounds while Diana Lee added 14 points.

The Spartans shot just 32.2 per cent from the field while UBC shot 52.6 per cent. The Spartans also had 21 turnovers to UBC's 13.

"We are taking this game as a lesson in missed opportunities," said TWU coach Cheryl Jean-Paul. "To go back and forth for the lead in a first half where we were still finding ways to fight through adversity and then to give it all up in the first few minutes of the third really hurt us. In some ways we have to take these games as a sign of program development that we have had great stretches of competitive basketball on both sides of the floor. But it will take more consistency throughout all quarters and three-minute stretches to overcome our mental lapses.

"UBC is organized in what they do and we weren't able to capitalize on early game stretches, which came back to haunt us later. We need to be better tomorrow and we will be better tomorrow. To compete in Canada West, you have to be mentally tough and you have to be able to recover from losses and see the next day as another opportunity."

After playing UBC tough through the first 20 minutes, the game went sour for TWU in the third quarter.

Over the 10-minute span, TWU was just two for 17 from the field while UBC was 10 for 15. That difference proved to be the difference in the game.

In the fourth quarter, UBC continued to press and extended its lead to a tidy 24 points.
 
The Spartans and T-Birds will play again Saturday at 5 p.m.

-TW-