Corner Brook, Nfld – The X-Women basketball team began pre-season exhibition play with a pair of games on the road against the Memorial Sea-Hawks. Friday night the Sea-Hawks defeated the X-Women 66-60, followed by a 71-65 victory over the visitors on Saturday evening. Both games were played at the Grenfell Campus of Memorial University in Corner Brook.
In Friday evening's game, the Sea-Hawks held leads of 18-11 after the first quarter and 34-29 at halftime over the X-Women.
They stretched their lead to 10 points after three quarters of play en route to the 66-60 victory.
Kelia Pond led Memorial in scoring with 14 points while Tianna Brown scored 11 and had 5 rebounds. Sea-Hawks player of the game Megan Robinson contributed 9 points and 6 assists.
For the X-Women, Kolbi Roper scored a game-high 15 points and also had 8 rebounds as she earned player of the game honors for the X-Women. Melissa Gottschall scored 10 points and Shannon Hatch added eight.
On Saturday evening, the X-Women found themselves down 22-16 after the first quarter to the Sea-Hawks but battled back in the second frame to even the game at 35-35 heading into the halftime break.
Memorial held a slight 51-49 edge after three quarters then outscored the X-Women 20-16 in the fourth quarter to complete the 71-65 win and the weekend sweep. Both teams used their entire rosters in the valuable on-court action as they prepare for the upcoming AUS season.
Individuals scoring totals for Saturday's game were unavailable.
X-Women head coach Augy Jones commneted, "I am very pleased with the way we played in our first games of the season. Memorial has all of their players back from last season and we have a lot of new faces and returning players with new roles. So I am comfortable with the outcome of those two pre-season road games."
"Kolbi [Roper], Lindsay [Lessard] and Melissa [Gottschall] performed particularly well. More importantly, we played everyone and everyone contributed. We have a lot of room for improvement but I am very happy with the positive atmosphere amongst the players."
The X-Women will be back in exhibition action next week when they heads to Ontario for a trio of games against OUA opponents. October 9th they will play York, followed by games at Western and Guelph on October 10th and 11th.