Calgary-Victoria for a #CanadianMade championship | Unibball Dispatch, Year 2
The Victoria Vikes have played like the No. 1-ranked team they were all season, but the Calgary Dinos beat them last time — albeit with a healthy lineup, which they might not have on Sunday.
Two weeks after a major script revision, Victoria has a chance to rewrite recent history — although Nate Petrone and the Calgary Dinos will want creative control.
Sixteen days after the U Sports player of the year and the Dinos dealt Victoria its only loss, they have a rematch for #CanadianMade national title in Vancouver on Sunday afternoon (4 p.m. ET, CBC platforms). It is the first all-Canada West final since 2010, so that is either 14 seasons, or 15 years.
Observations, laurels, and kind words.
The scores!
(3) Calgary Dinos 87, (6) UPEI Panthers 54
Nate Petrone felt it early, and had a sense of the moment, taking the ball when the Dinos lost a second starter to an ankle/foot injury. Calgary’s 6-foot-11 interior anchor, Declan Peterson, rolled his ankle after contesting a rebound a minute into the second quarter. Petrone checked in from a short rest and immediately set up a triple by rookie starter Daniels Baumanis, starting a Calgary six-minute surge that took their lead from 10 points to 21.
“It was like open gym,” he told CBC Sports afterward. “The Calgary faithful was here. I would die for them, they would die for us.”
Calgary is in the final for the first time since winning their first title in 2018. Petrone finished with 30 points, 10 rebounds, and eight assists. He’s averaging 26.2 points across the Canada West postseason and two Final 8 games, without forcing shots.
(4) Victoria Vikes 89, (1) Ottawa Gee-Gees 75
Victoria has had some adversity, but it has the luxury of having a one-time Canada West all-star honoree as a sixth man. Geoffrey James scored 19 of his 21 points in the first half while all-Canadian Renoldo Robinson chilled with foul trouble, and Victoria is off to their first championship game since 2006.
The mild take
Invest some care since this is rare: a band of ballers fronted by the national player of the year against the team who was ranked No. 1 most of the year.
They have some history, since the season went up for grabs on Feb. 28 when Calgary went into Victoria and showed the Vikes were, well, vincible. Both have looked the part so far. Victoria has won both their games by double digits while sharing the scoring load between James, Robinson, Swiss army knife defensive stopper Sam Maillet, and forward Shadynn Smid.
There was a perfect end to a perfect evening when Maillet took, and made, his only three-point try of the night with about six minutes remaining. He was a 27 percent deep shooter on the season, but when it’s time, it’s time.
Calgary had enough bench strength to withstand UPEI after Peterson joined point guard Noah Wharton among the walking wounded. (Wharton rolled his left ankle against Queen’s on Thursday.) That is what the powerhouses do; they have their future in reserve to push up their timeline for the present. The Dinos played a controlled final two quarters on Friday, but they put UPEI in a corner with 46 points in the first 17 minutes, which was peek into the peak form where they had century games against Queen’s and UBC in their previous two outings.
It could be a good one, and it should show how the level of Canadian university basketball keeps improving nationwide.
Other narrative notes
The loss of Wharton led to Calgary coach Dan Vanhooren pressing Baumanis, a Latvian newcomer, into the starting lineup. Baumanis helped spread the floor for Calgary, hitting four triples among his season-high-tying 14 points. Who was his previous 14-point effort against? You guessed it: Victoria, on Oct. 13.
Both of these teams attest to a willingness to break the mould. Victoria’s first-year head coach Murphy Burnatowski has been described, on the CBC streams, as a reluctant coach, and he was willing to add some new offensive wrinkles collected while coaching in Europe.
Victoria’s 6-foot-9 forward Ethan Boag, who garnered Canada West all-star recognition, has yet to have a big shooting performance at nationals.
With the Vikes beating 1-seed Ottawa, it marks four seasons in a row that the No. 1 seed has not won the title. The last No. 1 seed who wasn’t Carleton to win it all was St. FX in 2001.
The vanquishees: Ottawa and UPEI
Gee-Gees: Bronze battle-bound for the third season in a row
I do not hide my fondness for particular teams and sportspeople. The Gee-Gees, under coach James Derouin, rekindled my deep regard for university hoops in the early 2010s when they started playing a style the coach called “organized chaos,” offering an alternative to the Federerian efficiency of the Dave Smart-guided Carleton Ravens.
The last chapter in the novel is a national championship, but it continues to prove elusive. Ottawa was bumped to the 1-seed when Victoria had its playoff stumble, and if the seedings had been reversed, it probably would be regarded as the better team winning.
This time, Ottawa started slowly, and the defensive game plan to counter Victoria’s combo of size and shot selection was harmed when defensive stopper Jacques-Mélaine Guemeta got two fouls in the first 2:39 of the game. Ottawa induced 21 turnovers from Victoria, but converted those into only 18 points.
Their vocal leader, fifth-year guard Drajan Stajic, played gamely after being injured in the quarterfinal against Concordia, filling every column on the stat sheet. However, third-leading scorer Justin Ndjock-Tadjore got in foul trouble and finishing issues for the second time in a row in a national semifinal, but of course, he’s a major part of why Ottawa is in these games.
The women’s basketball Gee-Gees are still in contention for a natty, though. They just have to take down two-time champion Carleton for the second time in a week, and you might have noticed Carleton hoops teams don’t lose much in March.
Panthers: a green energy boost
The preliminaries are often better than the main bout. By virtue of ousting UBC, the Panthers made this event less than predictable, even if they ran out of petrol against Petrone and Co..
Harrying Calgary into getting off-schedule is easier said than done, and UPEI seemed to just not have the juice while playing back-to-back. You could probably read fatigue in their shooting stats and turnover total (minus-4, 17 to Calgary’s 13). But this is about representing a small Atlantic school well, and the Panthers and floor leaders such as Kamari Scott and Kyree Thompson did that well.
Bonus basketball for UPEI: the bronze-medal game on Sunday is a 2 p.m. Atlantic time start.
Fun facts!
Victoria’s last title was in 1997. That is 27 seasons ago, not 28. COVID!
Calgary has made 30 three-pointers through two games. Oddly enough, they had 13 turnovers in both contests.
When was the last time the Moser Award winner and his team opposed a team that had claim on No. 1? Well, you could cite 2017, since Ryerson was the 1-seed and Carleton’s Connor Wood copped the Moser Award. Two seasons prior, the Phil Scrubb/Thomas Scrubb Carletons matched up with Ottawa and player of the year Johnny Berhanemeskel in the final.
One moment that will probably be on Calgary’s highlight reel. Character guy Spencer Roberts, a 6-foot-10 fifth-year reserve centre, had a wedgie — the ball getting stuck between the rim and backboard.
The Big Six
A half-dozen hoopsters who came up clutch, outside of player of the game honorees:
Aidan Smith, guard, Calgary
Smith did make a layup, just to see what it felt like. The 3-and-D guard tallied 13 points and nine rebounds, and was charged with only one turnover.
Daniels Baumanis, guard, Calgary
The fill-in starter for Wharton, who averages 5.9 points, doubled that with his 14 points to give Calgary just the right amount of complementary scoring.
Samuel Maillet, guard, Victoria
Maillet was a rookie for Dalhousie in 2020 when they took Carleton down to the wire in the national final, and five years, and one cross-country transfer later, he’s in the final. He probably could have been Victoria’s player of the game, with a perfect 6-for-6 shooting night and a 13-point, 10-rebound, eight-assist near triple-double.
Shadynn Smid, forward, Victoria
Victoria was plus-16 (48-32) on points in the paint, and the springy Smid was a catalyst, finishing off two alley-oops from Robinson as Victoria slowly drained hope of an Ottawa comeback. He finished with 18 points and eight rebounds.
Jacques-Mélaine Guemeta, guard, Ottawa
In spite of his early foul trouble, Guemeta had a game-high 24 points, including eight at the start of the second quarter that spurred Ottawa to dig up from a 16-point deficit to close within three. That put a path to a comeback in play, for a spell.
Kamari Scott, guard, UPEI
Call this a career achievement-based choice. Kyree Thompson was UPEI’s only double-digit scorer against Calgary, as Scott and his fellow UPEI guards had the buckling challenge of chasing Calgary’s big guards who can shoot. But Scott has been a talismanic talent for the Panthers, getting them into the Final 8 twice and bring a conference championship banner to the gym in Charlottetown. Put some acclaim on that.
Note
All records and statistics are sourced from usporthoops.ca by Martin Timmerman.
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