The Quest Kermodes men's basketball team cruised to an impressive 89-82 victory over Northwest Indian College (NWIC) on Friday (Oct. 29), to move to one win and two losses in exhibition play.
The Kermodes started off strong and led the entire game, building a lead as high as 20 points and dominated NWIC with their aggressive rebounding and strong shooting.
Quest head coach Sean Shook was satisfied with his team's performance.
"It was a much better effort tonight," he said. "I really thought our bigs played well today and helped us control the game."
Shook pointed to the triple towers of Brodan Robertson, Connor Heinrichs and Jesse Norris as a major reason why the team triumphed against NWIC. Robertson grabbed nine boards, scored eight points along with three assists and two steals and was a force on the floor for most of the night. Heinrichs also played a prominent role, making seven of 11 shots from the field for 17 points and adding five rebounds. Norris, who was seeing his first action after his foot injury was also solid. In 11:34 of playing time, he picked up seven points, four rebounds and two assists.
"I was really pleased with the effort of Norris today," Shook said. "He really helps us out at the post and we had a good rotation of the three guys today. We're really looking for major contributions from our bigs and we got that today."
Another notable performer was guard John Pankratz, who was the team's leading scorer on the game. Pankratz put up 20 points on seven of 10 shooting and Shook liked what he saw from him against NWIC.
"JP scored 20 points in 20 minutes and in a league game he's probably going to play the whole game," Shook said. "We wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to get some minutes today but John had a great game."
Quest came out strong, building a five-point lead after the first quarter, which increased to 11 after the first half. The Kermodes also dominated on the glass, out-rebounding NWIC 25-16. The team also shot a sparkling 51.4 per cent after one half of play.
The third quarter saw Quest add six more points to their lead to go up 74-57 after three. In the fourth, the Kermodes built a lead as high as 20 but saw it evaporate to as little as eight and ended up winning by seven, 89-82.
After playing a game out of his natural point guard position, Bryce Froberg rounded into form, directing traffic and having a great all around game. Froberg filled the stat box with 15 points, six steals, six rebounds and four assists.
Shook said that his starting lineup on the regular season will likely be Pankratz, Froberg, Robertson, Heindrichs and Kyle Thorau but did say that Jose Colorado will fight for a job and might play his way onto the starting lineup.
The team's final exhibition game was played against Western Washington University in Bellingham on Monday (Nov. 1). They will open their regular season in Nanaimo when they take on the Vancouver Island University Mariners Friday (Nov. 5).
For more information on the team, visit www.questkermodes.ca.
