While Canada’s Patrick Anderson had a game-high 26 points leading Canada to a 62-57 victory over Australia on Saturday at the IWBF World Championships – Bo Hedges brought some buckets from the north with eight points of his own.
With the win, Canada will play Italy next on Monday at 11 a.m. ET.
“Some of the boys were calling it a vintage, throwback performance and bringing up numbers like 2000 and 2012 – that made me feel good and old at the same time,” said Anderson, who added 12 rebounds and nine assists in the victory.
“At this point in the tournament, it felt good to have a great win and see the bench come alive.”
Canada trailed 35-27 at halftime but outscored Australia 22-12 in the third and closed out the quarter on an 8-0 run to take a 49-47 lead into the fourth. Canada then scored four unanswered 1:36 into the fourth to pull away for good.
In addition to Hedges, and Ostepchuk each finished with eight points in the win. Colin Higgins and Vincent Dallaire added seven points each.
“It’s always tough after you lose in the quarters, but for us to regroup, come back and get a big win against Australia is really big,” Higgins said. “We haven’t beaten Australia in several years. This solidifies our spot in the Top 6 here at the Worlds.”
The Senior Men’s National Team finished 12th at the 2018 World Championships in Hamburg, Germany and was eighth at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. With Saturday’s win, Canada is guaranteed to finish in the Top 6, which would be its best finish since 2010 when they placed seventh at the Worlds in Birmingham.
“It’s been a long road from finishing 12th in Hamburg and eighth in Tokyo, slowly, like turning a ship, it’s slowly turning in the right direction,” Anderson said. “We have a chance to end on a winning note on Monday, which is nice. We’ll be up for our final game for sure.”
On the women’s side, Team Canada lost 66-47 to the Netherlands in the quarterfinals on Saturday afternoon. They will play Spain on Sunday at 4:00 a.m. ET in the 5-8 crossover game.
Source : Alaska Highway
