Am\u00e9lie Collin<\/a> continued to do what she does best in frustrating the opposition, adding four more steals to her career total to go with four points, four assists, three rebounds and a block.<\/p>\nFirst Team CW All-Star Olivia Weekes led the way for the Thunderbirds with 19 points on 8-17 shooting to go with seven boards and two blocks. Sara Toneguzzi also had a big night for the T-Birds, finishing with a season-high 14 points.<\/p>\n
The first half saw both teams finding their footing in this championship battle. A low-scoring affair that saw almost as many combined made free throws (16) as field goals (20), the ‘Birds held a 30-28 lead after the first two quarters of play.<\/p>\n
While the scoreboard stayed tight in the third, things seemed to click for Calgary early in the second half, coming up with a number of key defensive stops while shots finally started to fall for the visitors as the momentum seemed to shift in the Dinos favour.<\/p>\n
A jumper by Toneguzzi to start the fourth gave UBC a 44-42 lead in what proved to be the last lead of the night for the T-Birds. A bucket from Gajic\u00a0on the Dinos’ next possession sparked an 11-2 run that saw Calgary take a 53-46 lead with 4:05 to play and never look back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Dinos went 9-12 from the free throw line in the final frame to ice the game away and clinch the Canada West banner.<\/p>\n
“We knew that we were going to have to box out and match their hard work,” Besselink said. “One of the keys was really limiting their offensive rebounds especially in the fourth quarter, really slowing it down and executing on offence. We talked a lot at halftime about getting clean touches and going to the rim and we shot a lot more free throws in the second half which was great, we also got a lot of stops in the second half.”<\/p>\n
This marks the ninth conference title for the Dinos women’s basketball program, also bringing home the trophy in 2001, 1991, 1990, 1989, 1988, 1984, 1979 and 1966 – celebrating that 1966 team just last month as part of the latest class inducted into the Dinos Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Both Calgary and UBC will now await the seedings of the U SPORTS Championships, which will be announced Sunday afternoon. This year’s national tournament will be hosted by Laval in Quebec City, March 5-8.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be very interesting to see what the seeding is going to look like,” added Besselink in reference to next week’s national championship. “There are no easy games at nationals and ultimately winning that first one will be most important.”<\/p>\n
-UC-
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Story Links
Next Game: at U SPORTS Final 8…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-506718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"U](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/USPORTS_opponent.png\")
<\/p>\n