Shayna Litman knows she is playing some of the last basketball games of her college career and she is not about to let the season end anytime soon.
Last Sunday, the 22-year-old University of the Fraser Valley Cascades player had one of her most outstanding performances of the season in the final match of a best-of-three playoff series against the Calgary Dinos.
After struggling in Games 1 and 2, she credits a little extra practice time ahead of Game 3 for allowing her to rack up 22 points (9/18 from the field) and picking up 11 rebounds in the 69-60 victory.
“We weren’t ready for our season to be over,” she said. “It was just a do or die moment.”
With the win, the Cascades will live to fight another round, taking on the No. 1-seeded Saskatchewan Huskies in a series that starts this weekend.
Litman, a Coquitlam athlete and Centennial secondary alum, said she was having trouble sinking her shots on Friday and Saturday, when she hit just 33% from the field.
“I couldn’t get anything to fall,” she told The Tri-City News on Wednesday, shortly before the team was set to fly to Saskatchewan. “Anything I usually make wouldn’t go down.”
But after the team’s Sunday morning shootaround, Litman stayed behind to work on hitting the basket. Her coach estimates she took a couple hundred practice shots and the results were almost immediate against the Dinos in Game 3.
“Once I got my first shot to fall, I got my confidence back,” she added.
After sinking a few, Litman was unstoppable.
In front of a packed gym filled with friends and family, she went on a run that she said will rank in the top-three moments of her college career, confounding the opposition and helping her team to victory.
“It was such a big game,” she said. “With everyone there, I wanted to make a lasting impression for my last game [at home].”
Litman is hoping she can keep the momentum going into the next series against a Saskatchewan Huskies team that is favoured to win.
But many of the Cascades players have experienced deep playoff runs before and know what it takes to keep their season alive.
In 2012/’13, the team won bronze at the Canada West finals and made their first appearance in the CIS national tournament. The following year, the Cascades fell short against Huskies in the Canada West finals, where they won silver, before eventually avenging the loss in a rematch at the bronze medal national championship game.
Litman said this year, the prairie squad is young and fast and will be difficult to defeat.
“They are always ready to compete,” she added. “It is not going to be easy.”
While Sunday’s win may have been her last home game of her college career, Litman said she is not ready to walkaway from basketball entirely.
The business major is planning on continuing coaching and has found a co-ed league that she said will keep her active.
“I don’t think basketball is something that will ever leave my life,” she said, before adding “but nothing too serious.”
@TriCityNews
