Huskies teams combine for 18-1 record as holiday season break begins

For a team that finished with a 6-11 record, and outside of the Ontario playoffs last season, the women’s basketball team doesn’t sound like a club on the rebound.

With record of 9-0 as the team enters the holiday, which almost mirrors the opposite of a 1-8 start last year, forward Kiyann Grimaldo isn’t content with just the strong turnaround. 

“I’m hopeful that we will finish with a perfect season,” she said. “I don’t want to get cocky, but we did it the first half of the season, I don’t see why we can’t do it in the second half of the season.”

This season it hasn’t been uncommon for the Huskies women’s team to beat opponents by upwards of 40 points. The team is showing serious chops at both ends of the court, ranking second in the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) with an 80.1 point per game average and first in steals with 20.1 per game.

One of the ways that Grimaldo said the team motivates itself to play with energy every game, even though the team steamrolled through its competition so far, is to conjure up the team’s fortunes last year, and recalling last year, in her words, “it’s not a good feeling.”

“It’s not like we were 9-0 last year,” Grimaldo said. “We do know what it was like to be on the other side, so we always have to ground ourselves whether we win by two or 20 because we have been in that position.” 

The women’s team is scheduled to take on the Durham Lords (5-5) on Jan. 16.

For their part, the men’s team has been almost perfect, going 9-1 so far this season. Following their defeat at the hands of the Seneca Sting, the men’s team has rebounded with two straight wins entering the holiday break. 

But in the team’s first game following their loss to Seneca, head coach Jonathan Smith said that the Huskies struggled, “almost feeling sorry for themselves” in the first half. While the team was down 48-33 to Durham at the half, they got it together for a 85-78 win.

“You have to go through that,” Smith said. “You have to go through the process of learning how to handle losing, how do you deal with it, how do you move forward?”

The men’s team next plays in the East-West Series, a three-game exhibition series on Dec. 28-29 at Humber College.