KAMLOOPS – Playing stifling defence through most of the night, the Thompson Rivers WolfPack men's basketball team ran away with a 68-57 victory over the UNBC Timberwolves Friday night.
 
The 57 points the WolfPack allowed was the third time since the 2017-18 season that they have held an opponent to 59 or fewer points. TRU limited UNBC to shooting 30 per cent from the floor as a team and to just 5-27 from beyond-the-arc.
 
A close contest in the first half, the game was decided during a 13-minute stretch from the beginning of the third quarter to the middle of the fourth during which the WolfPack outscored UNBC 32-18 led by 14 points from Simon Crossfield.
 
Crossfield absolutely caught fire in the second half of the game, finishing the night with 17 points while going 5-7 from long distance. The second year from Vancouver had by far the best offensive game of his WolfPack career.
 
"He's played more minutes in two games than he probably did his entire time as a freshman," said WolfPack head coach Scott Clark "He's spent time in the gym shooting the ball and he's getting healthy right now so I'm happy for him."
 
Alongside Crossfield, Brendan Sullivan added 13 points with Brad King adding ten points, six rebounds and four assists.
 
Through three games the WolfPack have now had three different leading scorers (Crossfield, Sullivan and Asher Mayan) as the young team continues to rely on its depth in scoring to complement what is the stingiest defence in the conference so far this season.
 
"Offence starts with shot distribution," said Clark. "Your best scorers need to be the guys putting up the most shots and I think that's happening for us right now, but we are still trying to learn and find our way."
 
The WolfPack, who led for 30 of the 40 minutes in the game, will be back in action tomorrow night when they face the Timberwolves yet again in Prince George at 6:00 p.m.