LANGLEY, British Columbia – The Trinity Western Spartans dropped their second in two nights to the visiting Victoria Vikes, 64-53, at the Langley Events Centre Saturday night in Langley, B.C. The loss drops the Spartans to 8-4 in Canada West play while the victory improves the Vikes to 3-7.

The Spartans trailed 33-23 at the half, and 47-45 after three quarters.

Fourth-year guard Jayden Gill (Abbotsford, B.C.) with 12 points, five assists, four steals, and three rebounds, third-year guard Shemaiah Abatayo (Vancouver, B.C.) with eight points, and three rebounds, and Hailey Van Roekel with eight points, and three rebounds led the Spartans.Tana Pankratz with 21 points, five assists, and five rebounds, and Abigail Becker with 10 points, five blocks, and four rebounds led the Vikes attack.

AS IT HAPPENED
The Spartans had their struggles in the first half. TWU opened the game trailing Victoria 15-10 after the opening 10 minutes and 33-23 after the opening half.
 
TWU put together an impressive third quarter after trailing by 10 points after the first 20 minutes. The Spartans went on a 22-10 run to take a two-point lead, 45-43 with just over a minute remaining in the quarter. Victoria responded with four straight points to start the final quarter leading by two points, 47-45.
 
Unfortunately for the Spartans, the Vikes would continue to roll to start the final quarter. Victoria opened the quarter with 11 straight points to take a 58-45 lead with just over five minutes remaining. The Spartans were unable to recover as the Vikes made it two straight over TWU with the 11-point, 64-53, win.
 
QUOTABLE
TWU Head Coach Cheryl Jean-Paul
"It was a tough first half. I think that we spent too much time trying to solve the problems the wrong way, over dribbling and passing into traffic, passing overtop of defenders. I'm really proud of the effort that we put into the third quarter to erase the first half. Which is a great sign of their mental toughness when it comes t responding to a poor first half. Unfortunately, the fourth quarter was a little bit more of the same and we were just not able t sustain the good things that we did to get back into the game."
 
"It is a tough way to play against a really good team. Victoria is just starting to find their rhythm as a program after having dealt with some injuries and a tough first-half schedule. We need to be able to learn from this and be better than this in the future."
 
"We need to be thankful for the tough lessons that we can learn from this, knowing that there are still a lot of things that we could have done in our control to have a little bit better finish and a better start. Those are things that are going with more training and more video sessions to learn from this. Every weekend we want to get better and just because we didn't win games, doesn't mean that we are not getting better. We are getting more depth, we are getting more offence. This is back-to-back games with double-digit scoring from our bench. Which is going to pay off immensely for us as head into the last stretch of the season. There were definitely some pluses that have come out of this weekend, it just didn't result in two wins."
 
NOTABLE

• TWU finished the night shooting 37 percent (20/54) from the field, 31.6 percent (6/19) from the three-point line, and 70 percent (7/10) from the foul line. Victoria finished shooting 35.2 percent (19/54), 23.8 percent (5/21), and 75 percent (21/28) respectively.
• Victoria outrebounded TWU 39-33, and had a 16-13 edge in steals.
• The Spartans are 19-47 lifetime against the Vikes.
• The Spartans lost 78-74 to the Vikes Friday night. 

UP NEXT
The Spartans will now travel to Calgary to take on the Calgary Dinos on January 19-20. Game time at the Jack Simpson Gym is set for 6 p.m. (MT) on both nights. The games can be seen live on Canadawest.TV.

About Spartan Athletics
As official members of U SPORTS, the Spartans currently compete in 13 sports in the Canada West conference, including women's and men's soccer, volleyball, basketball, hockey, cross country, and track & field, as well as women's rugby sevens. TWU also competes as an independent team in men's rugby. Since TWU entered U SPORTS in 1999, the Spartans have won 14 U SPORTS team championships and 34 Canada West team championships.
 
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