Jonas Emilsson
www.KramMag.com

The E.P. Scarlett Lancers knew Clair Colborne was going to get her points.They also knew that if they implemented a game plan that focused on making the rest of the St. Mary’s Saints beat them they would have a pretty good chance of capturing the HSBC Calgary Basketball Classic championship.

Mission accomplished for head coach Jim Bamford and crew as they came away from the Gold medal game with an 84-68 victory.

Jordan Reid, an athletic 5’10 forward led the Lancers with 28 points and post player Lauren Tolley netted 25 points.

Colborne scored a game-high 36 points.

Click HERE for more action photos from this game.

“They have a pretty sweet player in Claire Colborne who can score a lot of points so we just did our best to limit her opportunities and take the ball away from her,” said Bamford.  “We did a decent job of that.”

“We went in with the philosophy that she was going to score her 30 points or more, and we just have to score more than 30.”

Despite being up against perhaps the cities’ best female high school baller, the Lancers owned the advantage of having a deeper more well-rounded team, which allowed them to spread the ball around and get points from different players and different key times.

“Some of our big players scored some big baskets for us,” said Bamford.  “Jordan Reid scored a bunch of baskets for us and Lauren Tolley scored a bunch, but it was a total team effort, everyone was involved.”

The Lancers took the lead early and never looked back, stretching a 21-16 first quarter lead to a 44-35 lead at half time.

The half-time lead could have been a lot worse, but the Saints went on an impressive run late in the second half which carried over to the third quarter to narrow the score to 44-41, but the points ran dry mid-way through the third quarter when the Lancers regained the momentum.

By the time the third quarter was over the Lancers had regained a comfortable double-digit lead, mainly thanks to their deep bench that allowed them to roll fresh players onto the floor.

“It was just a great effort,” said Bamford.  “Our bench got in and scored and we just kept rolling girls over and they just kept digging down deep.  They did an awesome job.”

The impressive victory over a tough opponent squarely places the Lancers in the contender conversation, along with the Saints and the St. Francis Browns.

But Bamford knows full well that the victory, as nice as it is, took place in the pre-season where most teams are still figuring themselves out.

“It’s early,” he said.  “Preseason.  We haven’t done anything yet.”

“Coming in we have pretty high expectations.  We have a lot of really good basketball players, and we have depth, we will help us out a lot in the playoffs if we get there.  I would like to get back here in this gym for the city final, but it’s a long road to get there.”