Tyndale gives Lions much needed win

Victoria Alarcon
Sports & Health editor
You can call it what you will, but the night was one of those one-man shows.
The audience was in awe and the Queen’s Gaels were spellbound as veteran player David Tyndale proved exactly how unstoppable he was, weaving his way through his many opponents cunningly and stealthily.

With five three-pointers and a total of four rebounds in the night, Tyndale surged past the Queen Gaels’ only defence to overpower the team 81-78; taking the win meant York had taken a small step closer to their playoff goal.
“It’s all about making shots. If you can make shots, you can play. Even if you can’t stop someone, if you’re scoring threes, then you’re going to eventually chip away,” said five-foot-11 Tyndale. “Confidence and repetition is what I live by. The more you shoot, the more you’ll make the other shots and build momentum.”
If it wasn’t the three consecutive three-pointers the all-star player got in the first quarter that amazed the crowd, it may have been the rebound he made off his own shot for the point in the fourth, soundly making the score 66-57.
The veteran point guard made it a challenge for the Gaels to come back and, at the end, the energy dried out for the team, apparently unable to win their first game back from the break.
“They’re a lot bigger team than us, they’re more experienced and I think that showed today,” said Queen’s head coach Duncan Cowan. “We made mistakes in bunches and they capitalized on it, and if we’d been a little bit more consistent I think we would have been successful today.”
The mistakes were visible from the easy rebounds the Lions were able to take, and even the constant personal fouls that plagued the other team throughout the second and third quarters. Together these errors gave the York Lions what they needed to further the gap with perfect free throws. York finished with an 84.2 percentage in free throws scored by the end of the match.
“We had to stay consistent and we had to get tougher on the defensive boards. In this league, it comes down to toughness – mental toughness and physical toughness– that you got to bring on a consistent basis,” said third-year York player Kenneth Buchanan.
The 6’1 athlete had a tough task in guarding one of the Gaels’ best players, Dan Bannister, throughout the game, but managed to limit his opponent to a few points.
Defensively, the Lions still need to improve on making sure all of their opponents are covered and pressuring their rivals to slip up. Offensively, however, the Lions have their go-to guy Tyndale at the basket, and along with him teammate Ostap Choliy, who is on his way to making his name known.
“We’ve looked at ourselves and asked ourselves what we’re trying to do, and what we’re trying to do first and foremost is to secure a home playoff game. In order for that to happen, we have to finish anywhere between first to fourth [in the standings],” said York head coach Tom Oliveri.