Both teams are expecting a key match against UFV in the first weeks of January
Photo via govikesgo.com.
Both the Vikes’ Men’s and Women’s basketball teams are concluding their 2025 with strong performances, while coaches and players express a strong desire to up their performance leading into the new year.
Currently the men’s basketball team is at 9-2 wins to losses, and the women’s team sits at 6-5.
“We’ve got to be happy to a degree,” said Murphy Burnatowski, head coach of Vikes men’s basketball. “We’re sitting in first place in the [division]. But I think we haven’t played our best basketball consistently.”
Burnatowski also said the men’s team should work on keeping energy levels up into the latter half of games.
“I think playing hard for the entire game is tough at times, but it’s something as simple as that. I think part of it comes off of having a winning season like we did last year … nothing feels better than going against the top team and knocking them off.”
“I’m excited for 2026,” said men’s forward Shadynn Smid in a written statement. “We’ve found what brings us success and what doesn’t, and the adjustments we need to make.”
“We just need to make the game easier on ourselves and not over complicate it,” he added. “Everyone on the team is able to go one-on-one but basketball is so much easier than that.”
Last season, the Vikes brought home the U SPORTS Championship title against the University of Calgary Dinos. The national title win capped off an explosive first year for Burnatowski as head coach, where he led the Vikes to a 20-0 season.
“We have a target on our backs,” said Burnatowski. “We’re mixing in new guys, and it’s not the same team that it was last year. We’re doing some things differently. It’s just about approaching every day and doing the little things right.”
“It starts in practice and it turns into games. But X’s and O’s and everything else doesn’t really matter if we’re not out-working teams.”
“We have one goal, and that’s to go back to back,” Smid said.
The men’s and women’s teams won both their matches against the University of Northern British Columbia Timberwolves, placing the women’s team at a two game win streak, and extending the men’s to a four-game win streak.
The Vikes Women’s team currently sits at third place in the Canada West B.C. division, behind Trinity Western and UBC.
Head Coach Carrie Watts describes herself as happy overall with the season so far.
“There’s a couple games that hurt us a little bit in terms of win-loss record and playoff standings at this point in this season,” said Watts. “I think the road trip to Thompson Rivers was a disappointing loss, because we need those wins. I think that was balanced out against the road win against UBC, where we played really well.”
“We’re a young group and we’ve got a lot of our young players playing a lot of minutes. I think you’re gonna have ups and downs, particularly when they’re on the perimeter. So I think there are lots of opportunities for them that I think are only going to get better and better over the course of the year.”
“I think a big key for us this year is inside-out movement,” said women’s center Abigail Becker in a written statement. “We have great shooters, but also a lot of size inside. If we pass the ball in, it’s almost an immediate double-team, which means someone outside is open. We kick to that open shooter and it’s a knock-down from the outside, or a strong drive against a long closeout.”
The women’s team is expecting some team members’ injuries to be recovered by January, providing opportunity for more substitutions.
The Vikes’ next games will be against University of Fraser Valley (UFV) on Jan. 9 and 10, on Vikes home turf. The Canada West Play-in & Quarterfinals will kick off the weekend of Feb 13.
“UFV just beat Thompson Rivers right after we did,” said Burnatowski. “So we know that they’re a high-level team, and they have some big, strong players that drive and attack, and everything else. So we just have to be ready to match their physicality when they come.”
“We’re much better prepared to handle [UFV], and I think we just need to be way more dominant and deliberate to get the ball inside,” said Watts. “We’ve had some really great inside-outside action, when we’ve been able to find our post players. They make really good decisions there.”
“That loss to UFV [on Oct. 25] was a tough one, we were playing a lot of [one-on-one] rather than swinging the ball to find each other in advantageous match-ups,” said Becker. “Coming up, I think we’ll need to have more patience and poise under pressure, and figure out ways to find what we want while playing through physicality.”
The Vikes women’s team will be taking a training camp trip to Cuba from Dec. 26 to Jan. 3, while the men’s team will remain in the country.
