The Memorial Sea-Hawks will enter next weekend’s Atlantic University Sport women’s basketball championship as the fifth seed.
The Sea-Hawks (9-11) closed out their 2018-19 regular-season schedule by splitting a pair of games against the Dalhousie Tigers Friday and Saturday at the Field House in St. John’s.
Memorial will take on the fourth-place University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds in a quarter-final matchup that will open the playoff tournament next Friday afternoon in Halifax.
The two teams met twice in the regular season, with UNB winning both games.
Dalhousie came to St. John’s with a shot at claiming fifth place, but the Sea-Hawks held on to the position with an 87-76 victory on Friday. The Tigers responded by winning 66-64 win in Saturday’s rematch, but that result didn’t change the final standings for either team.
That’s not to say Saturday didn’t mean anything to the Sea-Hawks. It was an opportunity to honour the team’s fifth-year players Sydney Stewart, Sydney Ezekiel, Brooklyn Wright and Rosie Stanoev, all appearing in their final home games of their collegiate careers.
Memorial came close to making it a winning farewell to the four, but some late turnovers contributed to a comeback by the Tigers, who scored the last six points of the game.
Dalhousie 66, Memorial 64 (Saturday)
The Sea-Hawks led by as many 13 points, but the Tigers clawed their way back, aided by some sharp three-point shooting (55.6).
Ezekiel led Memorial with 19 points, with Stewart adding 14 and Wright 10.
Stewart finished the regular season in third place in conference scoring with a 21.1 points-per-game average and first in steals (54).
Wright was second in blocks (32), Ezekiel was seventh overall in scoring (15.1) and third in steals (37) and Haille Nickerson second in free-throw percentage (85.5).
Memorial 87, Dalhousie 76 (Friday)
Stewart’s game-high 23 points keyed the Sea-Hawks’ victory, while Ezekiel (17). Nickerson (13) and Jane Baird (10) also in double figures for Memorial, which came up with 30 points in the third quarter alone.
