Women’s Basketball: Final Home Game

Five-Year Veteran Kaylah Barrett Plays Final Home Game in a Stingers Uniform

SportsJulien Assouline — Published February 22, 2015 | Updated February 22, 2015 at 8:02pm

Even though Barrett did not have her best game, she will go down as one of the best players to wear a Stingers jersey.

“She’s the best player we’ve ever had here,” said coach Keith Pruden. “Everybody admires her, everybody admires the way she plays. She gives 100 per cent all the time and she’s one of the most competitive kids I’ve ever coached.”

Barrett finished the game with 16 points on 4-11 shooting. She did that while facing a daunting and physical McGill defense.

“Everybody tries to defend her as well as they can,” Pruden continued. “Every time she had the ball, her check was playing her a specific way to force her into as much traffic as possible. It was a deliberate strategy on McGill’s part and they did it really well.”

Although she did not get off to the fastest start, Barrett committed an early foul and turnover. She turned things around quickly, creating fouls and scoring her first four points of the game on the foul line.

Additionally, Berrett really hit her stride in the second quarter. After getting subbed back into the game, she made her presence known scoring eight of her 16 points in the second quarter, giving her 12 points for the half.

The score at the end of the first half was 30-27 in favour of the Redmen.

In the second half, McGill started to pull away, forcing Concordia to make a lot of mistakes.

“They hit a coupled of shots early [in the second half] and we started to get frustrated and started doing a lot of silly things offensively. That gave them some momentum,” Pruden said.

“We came back at them but they’re ranked high for a reason, and they didn’t let us crawl out of that hole very easily.”

McGill was able to get their lead up to as much as 11 points in the third quarter, making it difficult for the Stingers to rally.

The Martlets then put the Stingers away in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Stingers 16 to 8. This was Concordia’s fourth straight loss to McGill and not an encouraging sight as the playoffs approach.

“For the most part, we played pretty well but ‘for the most part’ doesn’t cut it at this stage of the season and against a team as good as McGill,” Pruden said.

“My assistant coach and I are convinced that we can beat them, but we can’t shoot this poorly, nor can we settle for long perimeter shots.”

Despite the loss, Stingers guard Daphne Thouin finished with 11 points, going 4 for 8 from the floor, all the while leading the team with 5 rebounds. She did all that while playing with an injured wrist.

“The last couple of games she’s been efficient,” said Pruden. “She’s also not 100 per cent, you might have noticed the tape job, she almost fractured her wrist the last time we played McGill so she passed up some shots that I would normally want her to take.”

The Stingers will be playing their final regular-season game on Feb. 26 at 6 p.m. against the UQAM Citadins.