Acadia (18-5, 12-2) 92, St. Francis Xavier (17-8, 8-4) 63 In a game that was basically over by halftime, the Axemen got a signature road win in Antigonish by dominating the X-Men before a packed house and handing X their worst home loss since 1985. Acadia dominated the glass including grabbing 19 offensive rebounds as 6'4" Sean Berry led the way with 18 points. More importantly, the Axemen got their first real stat-sheet-stuffing performance from last season's AUS Player-of-the-Year 6'1" Paolo Santana who had 16 points, 8 assists and 6 steals, igniting the Axemen attack. Coach Steve Konchalski was blunt in his assessment: "They just beat us up inside with physicality and Paolo was tremendous off the dribble." Acadia, already a contender without a healthy Santana in the lineup, will be that much more of a difficult team to face as Santana overcomes his season-long bout with an ankle injury. Acadia shot 55% this afternoon and went 9 for 17 from downtown in a dominating performance. Acadia had leads as large as 17 in the first half and held 6'8" Islam Luiz de Toledo to just 8 points and 2 boards as the center, who is most people's choice as the top freshman in the country, battled foul trouble all afternoon. In all, Acadia forced 25 X turnovers; 6'2" Tyler Richards had 24 to lead X. If there is one possible achilles heel with Acadia, it may be their overall free throw shooting as a team; today the score could have been worse but Acadia went only 11 for 22 from the stripe and is shooting below 59% as a team for the season, last in the AUS. The Axemen split their difficult weekend road trip and remain firmly in one of the two first-round bye spots in the AUS standings. Box Score
UNB (5-21, 2-12) 86, Memorial (1-21, 0-12) 65 FOUR POINT WIN The Reds swept the weekend series in a rare Sunday morning game which began at 11:30 AM Newfoundland time. Colin Swift had 19 for the Reds including 5-9 3's and added 7 assists while Grant Harvey led the Seahawks with 20 points and 9 rebounds. With their pair of four point wins, the Varsity Reds are now 6 points behind UPEI for the sixth and final spot in the AUS tournament.
2 comments:
Based on the Acadia-X box score it looks like the X scorekeepers were asleep on the job. 22 total team rebounds including 8 team offensive rebounds for Acadia is highly improbable. While stats keeping has always had its problems in the CIS it would be a shame for Leonel Saintil to potentially miss out on a conference rebounding record because someone was not paying attention. I am not suggesting that this problem is unique to St. F.X. - a quick analysis of the CIS box scores by home gym would likely reveal other quirks such as schools with abnormally high or low assist or block totals.
A look at the AUS web site shows the "Team" is the second leading rebounder for St. F.X. with 7.3/game - good enough to be in the AUS top ten. If Islam Toledo (8.0rpg) has a few bad games "team" may end up winning the St F.X. top rebounder award. Luckily for him X plays some of its games on the road - otherwise "team" would probably have an insurmountable lead. In all seriousness, this kind of sloppy record-keeping is unfair to the student-athletes who work so hard during their university career and it reflects poorly on both the school and the league overall.
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