Gaels, Gee-Gees on same half of U Sports men's Final 8 bracket; same goes for Ravens and Gaels out in Edmonton
The Tricolour rocket ride can't end just yet. Or can it? All bets are off when U Sports teams go out of conference for nationals, and both Queen's parquet quintets are facing unfamiliar opposition.
That’s it, on to Winnipeg for the Tall Yellow Guys.
One day after Isaac Krueger came to the rescue, one can put down the nightmare fuel flavoured by an Ottawa-Queen’s matchup in the first round of the Final 8. It would have been like the horror movie where the villain resurfaces implausibly. A veritable nightmare on Earl Street!1
More to come in a moment on the matchups for both national tournaments in unibball, which is my nom de hoop for Canadian university basketball that is sooooo fetch.2 The men’s basketball Gaels are the No. 2 seed and will face the No. 7 Winnipeg Wesmen this Friday (3 p.m. ET, CBC Sports) at the the PEPS-Amphithéâtre Desjardins in Ste-Foy, Que. The Gee-Gees, as the wild card, are the No. 6 seed, facing the UQAM Citadins, the Québec league winners.
So it could be Ottawa-Queen’s on Semifinal Saturday. Not gonna lie, it hit me like 300 kilograms of wet cement that Ottawa would be the wild card. They deserve it, but the Gee-Gees also have been off since Feb. 24. Look at what Queen’s has been up to about 200 km to the south-southwest.
Cole Syllas, Luka Syllas, Cameron Bett, Michael Kelvin, Fofo Adetogun and all the hooping Gaels I want to buy a coffee or tea for now have to rest and reset from were Doing Work to get Ontario University Athletics’ Wilson Cup. They triggered — don’t let Jay Bilas know! — what might be the first Court Storming in the history of Queen’s men’s basketball.
There was delirium when Cole Syllas, in his final play on his hometown home court, banked-in a buzzer triple to clinch the OUA final against the Brock Badgers. Brock, of course, idled Ottawa with a 23-point rout on the Gee-Gees’ home floor back on Feb. 24.
Hey, if it’s to be, then it is meant to be. A publisher of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books would probably reject a storyline like the one Queen’s has weaved for three weekends. Memories have been maaaaaaade, as Tim Riggins might say, and the ARC at Queen’s will have a men’s basketball banner, as man-of-the-match Syllas highlighted.
“As a kid from Kingston coming to games, seeing the struggles Queen's has had in basketball over the years … The rise we've had over the last decade of building, building, building up to this point of finally getting gold, finally getting a championship, getting our names on a banner that every time we come back here, being a part of history is pretty incredible.” (gogaelsgo.com)
Effin’ A, and (B) keep some freaking perspective. The right rooting interest entering the first Carleton-free Final 8 since Jean Chrétien was PM is capital-S Story. But whose epic hoser hoops story? Apart from No. 8-seeded host Laval Rouge et Or, no team can be ruled out of the running — that is what everyone desired when Carleton kept running it back, and Carleton always said that would prevail eventually. So do, repeat do not, get tangled up in Gaels’ gold, red, and blue.
Prior to touching on the seeds for the men’s nats in Ste-Foy, Que., and the women’s Final 8 in Edmonton, some review is needed of how the Tall Yellow Guys got here… four of the last five wins have been sealed by a Syllas sibling making make a shot to tie, win, or ice the win in the closing seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime. Incroyable!
Feb. 16: 89-88 (OT) vs. No. 1-ranked Ottawa. Luka Syllas made a short jumper with 11 seconds left in the bonus session, and Queen’s eked out their second one-point win against the Gee-Gees to gain the tiebreaker in the OUA first-place race. The lead changed hands thrice in the final 70 seconds of overtime. Possible key stat long after the fact: Queen’s outscored Ottawa 19-9 on second-chance points.
Feb. 17: 77-69 vs. Carleton. It was a wire-to-wire win, but still, it was against Carleton and Obvious Symbolism is Obvious. The entire university-hooping nation has only been coming at the Kings since 2003, and mostly missing in every March except ’08, ’10, and ’18. In this one, Michael Kelvin provided Queen’s timely triples that stretched leads in the second and third quarters, and the Gaels locked down home court throughout the playoffs.
Feb. 24: 85-79 vs. McMaster (OUA quarterfinal). A wire-to-wire, but the Marauders hacked a 10-point deficit to two in the final 90 seconds. Luka Syllas got the dagger in the dying seconds.
February 28: 95-90 (2OT) vs. U of T (OUA semifinal). The Gaels probably had the wild card pocketed but had get in outright against those Valiant Blues. In a game with 10 ties and 14 lead changes,3 the defining moment was one of the ties that did not have a lead change. The Blues’ Noah Ngamba made a fadeaway two-point shot for a tie with 0.5 seconds left in regulation time. But he missed the and-one free throw that would have sent the Blues to nationals for the first time since 1997.
Syllas made a tough game-tying bucket late in the first overtime, and Queen’s took it from there.
March 2: 79-76 vs. Brock (OUA Wilson Cup final). Go to CBC Sports’ YouTube channel and start the live broadcast around the 1:48:52 mark, which means you pick it up with Queen’s trailing by five points with 4:23 left, and both teams operating without their first look on offence — Syllas had been tossed, and Brock’s Jordan Tchuente had fouled out after playing just 17 minutes.
Kreuger, over the next sixty-six seconds, went 2-of-2 from the line, then said 18 percent three-point percentage be damned, and hit a tying triple on the next trip. And who ripped down the defensive rebound on the ensuing stop that held the tie, and got the board to end Brock’s last possession of the day? Isaac Krueger again!
It takes a lot of players making a lot of timely plays in all phases — over three wins in three or four days! — to win a Canadian university basketball title. That other version of March Madness does not ask teams to prove they can run a gauntlet of three do-or-done games in one weekend, or play back-to-back days. Our unibball is awesomely aggro like that, plus, you know, Air Canada sucks. There is almost a giddiness in waiting for the surprises to come from this basketballing milieu that the Serious Sports Media pretty much ignores. Their loss!
Second quarter: seeding thoughts
The rankings were a moving target, eh? Ultimately, what seems plausible is that wild-card Ottawa and Canada West second-place Winnipeg were flipped to avoid the all-OUA East matchup. The Gaels and Gee-Gees are in the Thursday afternoon doubleheader, since it would be grossly unfair to have Victoria tipping off at 10 a.m. or 12 noon west coast time.
The dance card for Friday (all times Eastern:
1 p.m.: No. 6 Ottawa vs. No. 3 UQAM
3 p.m.: No. 7 Winnipeg vs. No. 2 Queen’s
6 p.m.: No. 1 Victoria at No. 8 Laval
8 p.m.: No. 5 Brock vs. No. 4 Dalhousie
The Gaels have no recent history with Winnipeg. The last matchup was in 2006-07, the last season with the 30-second shot clock. Mitch Léger was a frosh that season. So, yeah, it has been a minute.
Third quarter: Semifinal Saturday is the new Collision conference
The overseers of the women’s Final 8,, indeed, put the two-berth conferences’ reps on course for potential Semifinal Saturday matchups. Saskatchewan and host Alberta are on the 1/8/4/5 side, along with ain’t-played-hardly-anybody Calgary. The reigning-champion Carleton Ravens and our Queen’s Gaels are on the 2/7/3/6 side. Tout commence jeudi au Centre sportif communautaire Saville sur le campus de l'Université de l'Alberta à Edmonton.
All times ET:
2:30 p.m.: No. 7 UFV vs. No. 2 Carleton
4:30 p.m.: No. 6 Queen’s vs. No. 3 Saint Mary’s
8 p.m.: No. 8 Calgary vs. No. 1 Saskatchewan
10 p.m.: No. 4 Laval at No. 5 Alberta
The quarterfinal winners get a maintenance day Friday before the championship-side games decide who goes home with what hue of hardware.
The Gaels always seem to be right there with Carleton yet so far away, and the eight-point defeat in the OUA Critelli Cup on March 2 was no exception. Laura Donovan, one of the core four, led the push that got a 20-point margin down to two. But Carleton has Kali Porcnic, and apparently there is only one of her.
Another of the core four of fifth-year Gaels, Julia Chadwick is up for U Sports defensive player of the year and an all-Canadian selection at the nats. They are looking for something that the whole team gets, eh?
Queen’s and Saint Mary’s have not met in women’s basketball since December 2016, seven seasons ago. I do find it amusing though, that their first two matchups took place in the fall of 1992. The Gaels won both, and, in that same sports season, the Golden Gaels pitched the only shutout in Vanier Cup history against, you guessed it, the Saint Mary’s Huskies.4
I had to check to see if the third-leading Gaels scorer, Bella Gaudet, is a Maritimer. Gaudet is a common surname in parts of the Maritimes. Nay, the second-year guard is listed as an Ottawa native and a grad of Cairine Wilson, the same high school as comedian Tom Green and curler Rachel Homan.
Calgary led in two of four criterion of the wild card. The Dinos lost in their first playoff game, and their strength of schedule is 46th out of 48 teams. But those are the rules…
Fourth quarter: in search of the lost Accord
Ginning up business for close-reading constitutional lawyers seems like the best way to close out and honour former PM Brian Mulroney, so here goes: Men’s nationals host Laval should not be playing in the Final 8.
A simple revision to playing regulations is needed.
Of course, no school would enter a host bid without the possibility of their team being in the tournament. The host should have a minimum .500 record against U Sports competition. If they can’t meet it, the berth should go to a geographically promixate team that was close to earning a berth.
That is not too high of a bar, and Laval, avec neuf victoires et 17 défaites, is under it with a .346 record. The Concordia Stingers, a .655 ballclub, could fill in nicely.
Anything can happen in a best-of-one showdown, of course. In 2015, the Bishop’s Gaiters were a .400 team (10 wins, 15 losses) when they arrived at the Final 8, and they took Ottawa to overtime in the quarterfinal. At least, channeling the Winning Time-ized Paul Westhead, they had effin’ earned it with two playoff wins.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
Queen’s athletics and recreation centre is located at 284 Earl St., and it’s geographical footprint includes the former newsroom of The Queen’s Journal campus newspaper.
Stop trying to make “fetch” happen, Gretchen.
Tie and lead-change stats come via the Veteran Voice of the Gaels, Bill Miklas. When Syllas lined up the last shot on Saturday, with Queen’s and Brock dead even at 76-76, my thought was, “Bill’s pipes can’t be subjected to another overtime.” Then again, his pipes are primo!
Whose quarterback was, you guessed it again … That iteration of SMU had David Sykes behind centre, and he knew a lot about how to make columns of numbers dance; he earned advanced degrees at Oxford and the London School of Economics.