Missing their big gun, the Oak Bay Breakers used a suffocating defence to dispose of the Reynolds Roadrunners Tuesday night.
The Breakers racked up a convincing 71-17 win in senior girls high school basketball to firmly establish themselves as the team to beat on the Island.
“I thought the girls were good. It was our first game back so I think both teams were sloppy but overall I thought they did some really good things,” said Oak Bay coach Rob Kinnear.
The win came with the Breakers missing one of the most dominant players in B.C. girls high school basketball, as Lauren Yearwood was on a trip to California for basketball.
“With all the weather, she missed a flight out of San Francisco so had to spend another night in California,” said Kinnear.
Yearwood was expected to be back when the Breakers took the court Thursday night to host Belmont.
Missing their leading scorer, Morgan Roskelley led Oak Bay’s balanced attack with 12 points, while Andrea Psotka and Sophie de Goede notched 10 points each and Nora Junkin and Imogen White each contributed nine.
“Tonight everyone got to make a contribution, which is great. That bodes well for our depth moving forward,” said Kinnear.
The Breakers currently hold down the No. 2 ranking in the province, with Port Coquitlam’s Riverside Rapids atop the rankings for B.C. senior girls AAA.
“It’s funny, when we’re not ranked where we want to be, we say rankings don’t matter. So we say the same thing when we’re in a great spot. At the end of the day, rankings are just a number,” said Kinnear, adding the only rankings that matter are the ones following the March 7 provincial championships in Langley.
“At this time of year there are some good losses that we take and there’s some bad wins, but everything is building towards being ready for the Langley Events Centre in March.”
Oak Bay is the only Vancouver Island team currently ranked in the top 10 for senior girls AAA, with the other nine teams all from the Lower Mainland.
“It is tough. We don’t have access to as many of the top-10 teams as some of the Mainland squads do but we just take that as a challenge,” said Kinnear.
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