DAVID LARKINS, Wesmen Athletics

The right medicine for a Wesmen team needing a dose of feeling good is to host the Brandon Bobcats. 

The Wesmen men's basketball team continued its home-court dominance of its Wheat City opponents Thursday, holding Brandon without a field goal for a four-minute stretch in the dying moments to come away with an 84-80 Canada West conference victory at the Duckworth Centre.

A team that had been desperate for some secondary scoring outside leading scorer Don Dayrit got it at the right time. Spas Nikolov had a career-high 19 points and tied a career-high with 11 rebounds before fouling out late in the fourth. American transfer guard Eric Racine had his best outing as a Wesmen scoring a season-high 16 points while adding eight rebounds, four assists and two steals. Redshirt freshman Emmanuel Thomas had a career-high 13 points on 6 of 10 shooting and Dayrit, not needing to carry the scoring load quite so much, was able to contribute in a variety of ways, dropping 13 points to go along with six assists, five rebounds and five steals. 

The Wesmen have never lost to the Bobcats at home during head coach Mike Raimbault's tenure and have won 18 of the 20 conference games between the teams since he took over the head job in 2010-11. 

The outcome Thursday was far from certain until the final seconds, despite the Bobcats going without a made field goal for four minutes, four seconds after Jahmaal Gardner's made jumper with 4:06 to go put them up 75-73. After Gardner's make, Racine hit a three to cue a 7-2 run that gave the Wesmen the lead for good. 

Dominique Dennis had 18 points to lead the Bobcats, who also got 17 from Sultan Haider Bhatti, 12 and 11 rebounds from Anthony Tsegakele and 11 from Gardner, who came into the game having scored at least 20 in the Bobcats first two games. 

The Wesmen shot a season-best 40 per cent from three and were 32-for-69 from the field. They also outrebounded the Bobcats 47-37. 

Winnipeg will head on the road Saturday to Brandon where the two teams will meet again at 7 p.m.

—#REPTHEW—