The Laurier Golden Hawks were able to build a first-half lead and hold on beating the Carleton Ravens 86-74 on Friday night.
The Ravens found themselves behind early as the Golden Hawks got off to a hot start taking a seven-point lead before an Aubrey Dorey-Havens three gave Carleton life.
The Ravens would battle back the rest of the quarter, building momentum and generating a lead change before Taye Donald threw down a dunk with 1:19 to play in the quarter to take a lead into the break.
Benhur Gebrekidan opened the second with a deep three for the visitors before Daniel Smith and MJ Okado hit back-to-back threes to make it a one-point game. Midway through the quarter, Carleton would find themselves back down seven before the lead was extended to twelve by a Maxwell Voorpool three. A late rally from the Ravens, driven by success with the midrange brought the game to seven at the half.
Daniel Smith remained hot from beyond the arc for Carleton early in the third, before a long sequence saw neither team score for almost three minutes. Fouls would begin to put Laurier further ahead as Donald would go 3-for-3 at the line Carleton would chip away but trailed by 8 after 30 minutes.
Foul trouble allowed the Golden Hawks to separate from Carleton in the fourth. After a run of Golden Hawks buckets in transition, Carleton found themselves down by 16 midway through the final frame. The Ravens would continue to hang around in the fourth, but couldn’t close the gap on the visitors.
Daniel Smith was 3-6 for the Ravens from beyond the arc in the loss. His touch from deep did not go unnoticed by head coach Taffe Charles. "He's a better shooter than he's been showing, I think he shot the ball well today and shot the ball well in Soo Sault Marie," explain coach Charles. Coach Charles believes that as Smith continues to show off his shooting ability it will open help to open the floor up for more of his teammates.
"We need him to shoot well, to spread the court a little more," he elaborated. "It's probably a little bit because they're covering Spencer harder, they're covering other people harder, so at some point he's making them cause he's wide open, which is nice, but maybe they'll leave him less wide open and leave room for some of our other guys."
