T-Birds top CIS rankings

OTTAWA (CIS) – The UBC Thunderbirds men's basketball team and women's volleyball team top their respective CIS Top Ten polls this week.  For the men's basketball team it is a return to the top spot after a brief stint during the 2008-09 campaign

 while the two-time defending CIS champion women's volleyball squad has led the rankings the entire year.

Men's Basketball
 
Ranked second behind the reigning champion Carleton Ravens in the first four polls of the season, the 2008-09 CIS finalist UBC Thunderbirds (7-0) climb up to No. 1 in the final rankings of the fall semester.
 
The T-Birds, who lost 87-77 to Carleton in last year’s CIS final, were No. 1 for one week last season (third poll – Nov. 11). The Ravens, winners of six of the last seven W.P. McGee trophies, had topped 31 of 32 coaches’ polls dating back to the start of the 2007-08 campaign.
 
UBC, which received 41 of 42 first-place votes in this week’s Top 10, improved to 7-0 in conference play over the weekend with a pair of dominating road wins in Winnipeg. The Canada West Pacific Division-leading T-Birds outscored the Wesmen 89-54 on Friday and the Manitoba Bisons 93-75 on Saturday.

The T-Birds currently rank second in the Canada West in scoring offence with 83.7 points per game and are second in scoring defence, allowing just 67.6 points against per contest.  They lead the league in scoring margin (+16.1) and turnover margin (+5.43), rank second in rebounding (43.7 boards per game) and steals (11.3 per game), and are third best in both field goal shooting percentage (44.4%) and field goal percent defence (38.6%).

Josh Whyte leads the T-Bird offence, averaging 19.1 points per game which is fourth-best in the conference.  A fourth-year guard, Whyte also ranks fourth in steals (2.6 per game) eighth in assists (4.1 per game), eighth in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.5) and tied for 19th in rebounding (5.9 per game) in conference play while averaging less than 30 minutes of action per game.

Nathan Yu (14.1 ppg) and Blain LaBranche (13.3 ppg) are also scoring in double figures and the T-Birds sport a roster that has eight players averaging more than five points per game.  Kamar Burke and Kyle Watson lead a team effort on the glass with 7.3 and 7.1 rebounds per game to rank 11th and 12th in league play.

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