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The #15 nationally ranked Thunder hit the floor this past weekend against cross town rival MacEwan University in a critical 2 game set. However the Thunder had to do so without leading scorer and rebounder Jamaal Bucknor who is still suffering from a groin strain suffered against the NAIT Ooks the week before. On Friday night – with their already shortened bench – the Thunder struggled to find any flow and fell to the Griffins 73-52. The Thunder still got a big game from David Shantz with 16 points, 14 rebounds and 3 blocks.  Freshman Brett Carey – who was starting in place of Bucknor – registered a career high 8 points and 4 rebounds.  Ben Grimsrud also added 8 points and 5 rebounds. “When your margin of error is very small you can’t squander the opportunities we did tonight and hope to stay in the game,” stated Coach Wood.  “We needed to seize every opportunity to score we got – and we didn’t.  We worked hard on the defensive end and didn’t reward ourselves with scores at the other end.”
Saturday night the Thunder battled extremely hard and held first quarter and half time leads and only trailed by one heading into the 4th where the Griffins would benefit from Thunder foul trouble and take the victory 78-60. “You hate to see a great basketball game decided by factors other than the players.  We came out strong tonight and gave a tremendous effort and were not rewarded accordingly.  I feel like we ‘won’ the basketball game but lost in the areas we couldn’t control,” remarked Coach Wood. David Shantz was huge again for the Thunder with 26 points and 15 rebounds.  Dallas Wright added 17 with 6 rebounds.
The Thunder wrap up the regular season this weekend with 2 games against the King’s Eagles. Come out and say goodbye to Jamaal Bucknor, Dallas Wright, Nate Wojcicki and David Shantz as they finish off their Concordia careers. The final home game goes Saturday night (February 15th) at 8 PM.

Photo Courtesy of John McIntosh