Hawks come close against Western
Jordan Furness

The Golden Hawks men's basketball team waged their home opener against the nationally ranked Western Mustangs on Saturday afternoon and left their fans frustrated in a close 82-78 loss. Coupled with Wednesday's 60-49 defeat at the hands of the Windsor Lancers, the Hawks find themselves at 0-2 to open up the 1999 season.

"There was that four point hump that we couldn't get over, and we had lots of opportunities to get it down," commented Hawks head coach Mike Kilpatrick, who added that the Hawks should be better equiped to capitalize on such opportunities as they grow as a team.

Laurier trailed the entire game, but rarely did the deficit go beyond 8 points. Second year player Ken Hodgkins made an impression from the opening tip off by grabbing several rebounds and sinking some early baskets. Near the end of the first half, Hawk fans got a good look at what this and the next few years hold for Laurier. Hodgkins made a great pass to freshman Matt Babel down under, and he drew a foul while forcing in the basket setting up a three point play. Shortly after, Laurier stole the ball from Western and gave it to Babel who sunk another two. A minute later, Hodgkins, pulled down another rebound and put it back up to get two more of his 12 first half points, thus ending a 7-0 run by Babel and Hodgkins and making the score 28-24.

However, as would happen several times throughout the game, Western stopped Laurier's run and the half ended with Western up 38-30.

The second half started extremely fast as both teams came out strong. Unfortunately, Western put down baskets just as fast as Laurier and the gap remained around eight points. The Hawks never gave up, though, and the game was not decided until less than 30 seconds were left. Bob Papadimitrou and Jeff Zdrahal, who was playing with an injury, both sunk three pointers in the last minute to once again bring Laurier to within four points. Fans were left to wonder if the injured Kevin Ryan could have made up the difference, but Hawks head coach Mike Kilpatrick was quick to point out that freshman Adam Rogers has stepped in admirably for Ryan who is out for the year.

Leading the scoring for Laurier was Hodgkins with 20 despite playing only 20 minutes due to foul trouble. Papadimitrou contributed 18 with 17 of them coming in the second half. Zdrahal, scored 13, down from his average of 22 last year, but that should rise once his injury heals.

"We're a young team, mainly second or third year guys, whereas Western is comprised of fourth and fifth year players," commented Hodgkins when asked why Western was able to maintain a lead on the Hawks throughout the game.

"We're just as talented as Western but we were playing against experience," added Hodgkins.

The Hawks next game is Wednesday night in Guelph. Kilpatrick expects that McMaster and Western will be heading to the nationals, but that the rest of the playoff spots are up for grabs. Waterloo, which had been expected to take the third playoff position, has come out of the gate 0-3, and recently lost their best player to injury. The rest of the teams appear to be fairly evenly matched, so little mistakes will be costly.

"In order to win, we will have to play Guelph at the level with which we played Western, said Kilpatrick. Laurier will then move on to play at McMaster Saturday.