LONDON, Ont. – Twenty and 19-point games from Anthony Spiridis and Peter Scholtes, respectively, helped drive the Mustangs to their fourth straight victory with a final score of 61-50 on Saturday night at Alumni Hall.
 
"Laurentian is very well coached and they do a nice job defensively," said head coach Brad Campbell. "Tony and Peter really picked up the slack. That's what a team does, when one guy is struggling a little bit other guys got to step up. That's something we've been searching for and it was nice to have that today."
 
Western's record moves to 8-7, placing them in second in the OUA West, only two points away from the Windsor Lancers. The Voyageurs record updates to 4-10 keeping them in third place of the OUA North with eight points.
 
Three Mustangs hit double digits in Saturday's contest, as Greg Morrow followed Spiridis and Scholtes with 13 points. Scholtes led the Mustang defence with 10 rebounds and Jedson Tavernier contributed seven of his own. Tom Filgiano was also an integral player on defence with five steals and four rebounds.
 
"We've been playing a much more aggressive style of defence" said Scholtes. "We started showing our ball strength and trapping and forcing the guy on the ball to make a tough decision of where he's either passing it to the big guy or doing a skip pass where we've been doing a good job with rotations of getting out of double teams."
 
The Voyageurs scoring was led by JD West with 14 points, followed closely by Sam Hirst and Nick Simon, who contributed nine apiece. Joseph Sykes led their defence with 12 rebounds and Hirst followed with nine.
 
Western's defence proved to be the Voyageurs' biggest challenge, as the Mustangs forced a number of turnovers early in the first frame. The purple and white registered six rebounds and four steals to prevent the Voyageurs from finding the bottom of the basket.
 
Spiridis took the lead in purple and white making 11 points where he found success making runs through the key to sink the layup. They went on to take the quarter at 16-13.
 
A late scoring run by the Voyageurs in the first frame brought the Mustangs focus back into action in the following ten minutes. Capitalizing on the rebounds their opponents could not grasp, the Mustangs were able to keep second chances low for the Voyageurs.
 
However, the Voyageurs began to adjust their play to match the Mustangs, recording three baskets from the perimeter to keep close. Laurentian added 10 rebounds to the score sheet, with Simon grabbing six while heavily defending Morrow. Despite increased Voyageur momentum, the Mustangs kept their lead and went into the half at 32-27.
 
After a few dry shots for the Mustangs, the Voyageurs answered with three 3-point shots to decrease their deficit to seven points early in the second half. Finding themselves in bonus territory with no fouls given, Morrow finished the frame at the free throw line with two baskets to make the score 51-40 going into the last ten minutes of play.
 
Despite the Voyageurs matching the Mustangs with ten points in the fourth frame, it wasn't enough to close the gap and the Mustangs walked away with a 61-50 victory.
 
"At the start we were struggling to get it in, but then we found our groove. We started feeding the post and going to work in the post." said Scholtes. "For us to take it to the next level and for us to compete with some of the top teams, we have to have contributions from four or five guys scoring the ball to take the pressure off Greg and let him do what he does well"
 
The Mustangs hit the last two road games of the season starting with a contest against the Queen's Gaels on Friday, February 12 at the Arc. Tip-off is at 8:00 p.m. and can be watched live at OUA.tv.