L'audace de Laval contre le «chill» de Dalhousie dans une demi-finale rarement vue
So did the Laval Rouge et Or pull off the biggest quarterfinal upset in the recent history of the U Sports Final 8? Either way, they and Dalhousie are looking to play giant-killer in men's uniball.
Laval, and their diminutive dervish Steeve Joseph, arguably pulled off the biggest upset in recent tournament history by vamoosing Victoria — and there is little arguably about it.
Semifinal(s) Saturday will tell more about whether the Rouge et Or, who pulled off a Maffia heist by defeating the 1-seed and the national player of the year, really belong in the U Sports Final 8 men’s basketball championship. There was potential for a one-off.
Laval, the host team backed by a raucous crowd by the anything-outside-of-Halifax-or-Ottawa standards of the tournament, got on the Victoria Vikes early and often to win by six points. Joseph, the guard who might be generously listed at 5-foot-8 and 148 pounds, dribbled-drove, ducked under lane defenders, and acted as a hype man after every big play.
Laval and the Dalhousie Tigers will meet in the second semifinal of the men’s tourney. The last time it was Québec vs. the Maritimes in a national semifinal was 1990. That was so long ago that three Québec teams that repped English-language schools played in the Ontario conference,1 and you could watch the game on TSN.
The docket for Saturday.
Queen’s-Ottawa men’s semifinal, 6 p.m. ET
Carleton-Queen’s women’s semifinal & Laval-Dalhousie men’s semifinal, 8 p.m.
Laval-Saskatchewan women’s semifinal, 10 p.m.
So, most mammoth upset in the recently recorded history of the Final 8? Victoria entered with a .903 win percentage. Laval, with the host berth secure, was a .346 ballclub. That 557-percentage-points discrepancy is absurd, and probably should be proscribed by rule, but whatever, Laval played in a catchy rhythm and Victoria largely did not. Diego Maffia needed 25 shots to get his game-most 26 points, and his support was lacking, to the count of the other Vikes shooting an effective 31 percent.2 It’s a potshot, but maybe a round-robin format is more necessary for high seeds from the West Coast, eh?
There have been other 8-ousts-1 outcomes in the men’s tourney. A pore through the indispensable usportshoops, compiled by Martin Timmerman, suggests it has not been topped.
2022: Saskatchewan 77, Brock 73. Percentage point gap: 224.
Saskatchewan (.731) and Brock (.955) were over 200 points apart in proficiency. It was a strange disrupted season due to COVID-19 health protections. Still, the Badgers had only one defeat by single-digits, and they got-got.
2016: Ryerson 109, UBC 101 (overtime). Potential percentage point gap: 103.
This near upset was just a fabulous first-round matchup between hometown UBC (.786) and top-seeded Ryerson (.889), trying to get its spurs as a first-time 1-seed three time zones from home. Open the stat spout. Both teams had five double-digit scorers. Ryerson went north of 70 percent in TSP, and the losing T-Birds shot 66.4% TSP.
The scoreboard in an arena that hosted hockey during the 2010 Olympics did not go to triple digits. It said Ryerson had won 9-1. That means they broke the scoreboard.
2007: Saint Mary’s 63, Concordia 62. Percentage point gap: 432.
This bracket-buster would not have happened a season later. The ’07 season was the last before the Canadian university game switched to the faster-paced FIBA game with the 24-second shot clock. The AUS got two berths as the host conference, so Saint Mary’s (.485 in the regseason) slipped in and upset Concordia (.917).
Pulling it off required Saint Mary’s leading scorer Mark McLaughlin, two-way guard Mark Ross, and leading rebounder Ikeobi Uchegbu to all play the entire game. Only seven Saint Mary’s players even played, with Erik Glavic, the future two-time Hec Crighton Trophy-winning quarterback, moonlighting with some grunt work under the basket.
2000: Brandon 73, Alberta 57. Percentage point gap: 138.
This upset also could not have happened a few seasons later. Late-era Jerry Hemmings Brandon (.636 before the tourney) was an 8-seed, but they won their four-team Great Plains conference, which would have assured them of at least a 6-seed under today’s rules. They went out and proved that they should have been estimated.
Earnest Bell had double-doubles in all three games, as the Bobcats came within a minute of the championship before St. Francis Xavier staged a late rally in the final to claim their first of back-to-back BOATS.3
Alberta (.774), in hindsight, might have been a shaky and somewhat rusty No. 1 after a skein of top-ranked heavyweights got toppled. The seven-loss Golden Bears had 11 days of downtime before the tournament. The Bobcats were off for just five days since the “G-Pac,” which is still alive as far as I believe, held its playoffs a bit later.
Talk about a fun playoff time to reconstruct. Four of the top five overall teams did not win conference titles. But Lethbridge received a 2-seed, and Western was the 4-seed even though McMaster and Laurentian won the OUA auto-berths. The four-team Québec loop had a regular-season interlock with the OUA East, who did not play the OUA West. Canada West was less than half its present size with only seven teams.
Brandon had another gutting championship game defeat against St. Francis Xavier in 2001. Alberta did win it all two seasons later.
Unprecedented, probably; and once again, Dal’s Rick Plato is a That Dude
I am fairly confident there has not been anything like that Laval over Victoria. Was it fair to the Vikes that their reward for a 28-win season and a conference championship was to play an away game 5,000 km from home? No. That just makes it funnier.
Meantime, a few words need to be said about Dalhousie, who is a semifinalist for the fifth time in the last eight seasons, but for the first time since they led Carleton until clutch time in the 2020 championship game. Tigers coach Rick Plato reminded the Unibball devotees of how he is a That Dude, which I feel like I’m stealing from the Shutdown Fullcast.
It was shocking that Dalhousie won so decisively against the Brock Badgers in the late quarterfinal. Dal’s Malcolm Christie going off for 26 points, with five triples goosing him to a Porcnic-esque 81.3 TSP, was just for show. The point is, a Rick Plato team is like that small family-owned business you trust over the chain that can buy a big billboard in the middle of the town.
Season after season, the Tigers show up tournament-tough, with a chill and coherence that helps them become close to more than the sum of some estimable parts. It feels like, from a distance, Dal just decided to get its Giant Killer on. Apart from Christie, they might not be able to land silky-smooth shot creators, be as athletic and physical as a top OUA team, or have the size of some Canada West teams, so everyone has the affect of a third-line grinder. Can it win in the end?
That always gets Carleton through when Carleton is in the men’s tournament. It works. Carleton, though, has also had the talent.
Dalhousie is a young team. Only one rotational regular, 6-foot-5 guard Samuel Maillet, is in his fourth season, never mind a fifth. Maillet kind of had a heat check for the entire Dal crew when the 26 percent three-point shooter hit from deep during the first half, which ended with a bad football score of 40-13.4
As for Brock, which won three road playoff games to qualify, it was a flat performance. There was a lot less energy in the gym than they had against them during their run through the OUA conference playoffs, since Carleton, Ottawa, Western, and Queen’s each had strong turnouts. C’est la vie.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
Ontario-Québec superconference, now, today.
Mafia was 11-of-25 with four three-pointers, and never got to the free-throw line, resulting in a 52.0 TSP%. The rest of the Vikes were 11-of-42 and tallied 43 points thanks to Laval’s need to foul constantly, which works out to a 31.0 eFG% and 52.0 TSP%.
We can use BOATS when an Atlantic University Sport team wins.
All player stats are from usportshoops, which tallies individual players’ stats from all games against U Sports competition.