OTTAWA - A 26-5 fourth quarter was the difference as the Carleton Ravens overcame a two-and-half quarter deficit to beat the McMaster Marauders 82-68.
Aidan Warnholtz (Kanata, Ont.) had 30 points and Grant Shephard (Kelowna, B.C.) had 14 points and 20 rebounds as the Ravens erased a 13-point McMaster lead for the victory.
After Mac shot the lights out in the first Carleton found themselves behind 26-13 just ten minutes into the game. The Ravens chipped seven points off the lead before the half but continued to trail Mac entering the final thirteen minutes of play.
As Grant Shephard and Reggie Seraphin entered the game late in the third the tide changed for the Ravens. Aidan Warnholtz would hit a long three which brought hope to a packed Ravens' Nest and the crowd was quickly back into the game.
Shephard would make a layup and record a block on the defensive end before a pair of Wazir Latiff threes lifted the Ravens to their feet again. The Ravens would enter the fourth down only seven.
The Ravens caught fire in the fourth with Warnholtz and Latiff scoring early before Elliot Bailey got hot hitting a pair of back-to-back threes to put the Ravens in the lead. With the home crowd ecstatic the Ravens fed off their energy and ran away with their newfound lead.
After the Ravens got ahead by eight, Grant Shephard found a loose ball in the key and slammed it home, signalling the exclamation mark on the Ravens' massive comeback.
"That gives us energy that sometimes we don't have in the fourth," said Shephard of the Ravens crowd. "The adrenaline takes over, it really helps, having the fans back and supporting us really helps us finish the games."
"I'm really upset about the first three quarters but I'm really pleased about the fourth. Why do we have to get down by so much to actually hold a team to five in the fourth?"
"I think it's a little bit of the process. We're still taking possessions seriously and we're still wearing teams down, somehow, someway trying to make it hard for teams to execute."
"At the end of the day, we can look at one side and say 'why are we getting so behind?' but on the other side we can say well 'we're coming out with these wins' so obviously there's something there and we just need to figure out how to do better to continue that through the whole game."
