Queen's Gaels are Cole-ing for the natty, against the home cooking of Laval
Buoyed once again by their talismanic tandem and tenacious defence, the Tall Yellow Guys are off to a championship game that will guarantee U Sports a first-time men's basketball champion.
The natty is Cole Syllas’, Luka Syllas’, and all of Tall Yellow Guys to capture now, after Ottawa was pushed into the banks by Gael force wins.
Plain and simple, the team with the top player on the floor almost always wins the day. Exactly 1,780 days after they opted to stay in Kingston and play together for the Queen’s Gaels, the Syllases turned it around 180 degrees to disorient Ottawa during the U Sports men’s basketball semifinal win on Saturday, keeping Queen’s on course to bring that BOAT back down the St. Lawrence River.
So how wild is this? Weeks after Carleton’s run of 20 tournament trips in a row ended, U Sports is guaranteed of a first-time men’s basketball champion. Two first-time finalists. Neither has even won a bronze medal. The Gaels will face the host Laval Rouge et Or, who have ousted conference champions twice now and have a towering tandem of 6-foot-9 Ismaël Diouf and wide-shouldered 6-foot-7 Haris Elezovic, plus sparkplug playmaker Steeve Joseph.
Do I dare try a scouting report on limited viewing? Queen’s should have the length and depth to limit Diouf and Elezovic. They already faced a pair of pulverizing posts against Winnipeg. The teams’ non-conference matchup five months ago is ancient history, but Joseph failed to get a bucket in that game and Queen’s won without using Cole Syllas.
Also, Laval is an 8 seed that is 11-17 this season. They are full value for tight wins against Dalhousie (83-74) and Victoria (75-69), but Queen’s is the best team out of a deeper conference, and what Fates would permit a sub-.500 team to win the title?
Back to the present, the story of this Battle of The 613 semifinal, an 84-77 TKO that means Ottawa will again summer in le pays de l'année prochaine,1 was told over about four minutes and change of the second quarter. Three consecutive threes, two from reigning national tournament all-star Drajan Stajic, had got Ottawa out to a seven-point lead.
Whatever Queen’s coach Steph Barrie said during the timeout translated, in any language, to, “OK Cole, go.” The bigger brother hit a three, slashed in for two, inciting a 12-0 run where a Syllas scored every point. Now Queen’s was ahead, sensing vulnerability. Mr. Flexvolt himself, Fofo Adetogun, stole the ball from Stajic on a drive, outleted to create fast-break numbers, and cleaned up with a tip-in basket.
The Gaels spotted up for five triples, and made four, all while their best deep threat, Cameron Bett, was getting a breather. The run eventually reached 23-3. It only stopped since all runs, unlike those drums in the distance, must stop eventually.2 And, of course, Ottawa was going to push back.
There, small sample size aside, is just something about Queen’s playing for a national championship on the campus of Université Laval. Someone said that about 2½ weeks ago. Whether it was a Syllas, or Adetogun, Michael Kelvin II, or the designated late blockers, Aaron Tennant and Isaac Krueger, the Gaels made Ottawa burn a lot of fuel to get back in the game.
The margin was pared to a pair in the third quarter, and Cole Syllas got his own rebound and dropped in a jump shot to start a 9-0 run for a 67-56 scoreline at three-quarter time. Khalifa Koulamallah found his jumper cables to get Ottawa purring and within a two-possession margin at 76-71 with 2:03 left. Aucun problème du tout; for the third time Barrie stumped Ottawa by choosing the question and the answer, and Syllas zipped a pass to Adetogun for a lay-in. A couple empty Gee-Gees possessions later, and it was on to Championship Sunday.
Who would have thought it?
At one time, just seeing Queen’s qualify for the Final 8 would have a checked a box on my sports bucket list. Football and rugby, showing my age, were the big men’s sports at my alma mater. I grew up listening to the football Golden Gaels on CFRC 101.9 and waiting till Monday to read Claude Scilley’s write-ups in the Kingston Whig-Standard. I covered hockey and basketball games as a student journo, but could tell it did not have the same cachet, heft, and whatever words grads from the Sideshow Bob of Canadian universities use.
A dozen years ago, in 2011-12, Barrie’s first season, Queen’s was 3-27. And those wins were all against Royal Military College, who withdrew from OUA basketball after that season after having lost 165 games in a row.3 So those Gaels might have been a one-win team if they were based in another other Ontario city.
Hiring Barrie, who guided Western to a women’s Final 8 silver medal in 2011, showed Queen’s was getting serious about men’s basketball. At first, the line was that they were getting some players, if not necessarily any game-changers.
On April 25, 2019, Barrie hit for two in the recruiting game. The Syllases, coming off an provincial 3A silver medal with the La Salle Black Knights, decided to join a team they grew up watching in person. Then there was that whole pandemic pause of OUA competition, and when they came back, they were in the game, serving notice in ’21-22 protections deal when they ended a two-decade-plus losing streak against mighty Carleton, won a Final 8 berth and finished fourth at the nationals.
Prior that, Queen’s hoops was a perfect low-stakes rooting interest when you never anticipated that anything could happen. And now it it the highest stakes time of the year in Unibball, the best off-brand, off-the-beaten-path game I can name, and the Gaels are beasting — question mark?! No, no question mark at all, even if Queen’s claims one of their alumni invented it. The scores have been tight, but these Gaels have seldom shown self-doubt. Come whatever might on the scoreboard on Sunday night — ooh, nice hedge against a freezing cold take — they are removing all doubt about who they are.
It’s great to see it, and I will think of those whom I wish were here for it.
At this writing, the last Semifinal(s) Saturday game is in progress, with Carleton leading Queen’s at halftime. Carry on.
First quarter: Laval uses their hall pass well
Whelp, that is why they play the games. Laval had the juice to defeat Dalhousie after trailing at three-quarter time. To a man, they fed off the Québec home crowd that certainly didn’t care about the details that they’re facing a host team.
Queen’s will need cool heads, especially if any 50/50 foul calls go against them in the first few minutes.
I already mentioned their bigs, but the stats indicate the main guards, Joseph and Sidney Lacombe, had eight assists against just two turnovers while both scored in the teens. But that was against a younger group of up-top defenders than Queen’s. Dalhousie has allowed five more points a game than Queen’s has had this season while playing a schedule that was challenging but not as challenging as Queen’s OUA East-heavy docket.
Second quarter: Carleton-Saskatchewan for the Bronze Baby, with some possible color psychology
Pick your fighters for the women’s final (9:30 pm. ET, Sunday). It is tough to go in against the Saskatchewan Huskies when 6-foot guard Carly Ahlstrom is playing her last game, with a chance at a championship. Ahlstrom went off for 27 to shepherd the Huskies by Laval, which had a 14-point lead out of the gate.
Carleton is reigning champion with last season’s tournament MVP Kali Porcnic in form. They might be ramping up à la the men’s team during their skein of court coronations. Start with a medium-light jog in the form of a relaxed, secure quarterfinal win vs. Fraser Valley. Push he pace with the hooping equivalent of hill repeats that leave their semifinal opponent seemingly sucking wind. Porcnic put it on Queen’s by an even wider point spread than the did the last five times. All love to the women’s basketball Gaels.
The Ravens went through three quarters against Queen’s with zero points allowed off turnovers. That’s an outlier, sure, but it indicates they won’t beat themselves, and I think Canada West teams budget for their opponents to throw the ball away.
Really, though, I want to talk about the psychology behind the choice in uniform colors.
In the NCAA Tournament, traditionally, the higher-seeded team wears their white uniform and the underdogs wear their darker colors. In U Sports, we’re not fancy, and teams wear whatever. Saskatchewan is the No. 1 seed, but for Laval, they rocked their dark green, after wearing white against Calgary two nights earlier.
Carleton, the No. 2 seed, has been in their whites through two games. Is Huskies coach Lisa Thomaidis doing some gameswomanship? Let Carleton wear white and get a sense of false security, or make them switch?
Really, it probably comes down to wearing whatever is cleanest.
Third quarter: Whither Ottawa and Dalhousie
For those scoring at home, (1) they have the internet on computers now and (2) the Ottawa and Dalhousie coaching staffs know what it is coming.
The Gee-Gees and Tigers, combined, have made 11 trips to the tourney semifinal in the last 16 seasons. After their third-place game on Sunday, they will have combined for seven medals in the last 11 seasons — all in silver or bronze. Thanks Sager, we know.
Both are still successful by any fair measure, and they will keep coming back. Banalysis-wise, the Gee-Gees allowed 16 offensive rebounds to Queen’s in both Saturday’s defeat and the regular-season finale three weeks ago, so there’s a coaching point and a prefab narrative for the critics for the next 50 weeks. The Gee-Gees closed out better in both contests than they did in the early January game when Queen’s hit jackpot, by putting up a 64.9 TSP and scoring 96 points in Ottawa’s gym.
Dogged offensive rebounding also swing the Laval-Dalhousie game. Laval, with their 6-9 and 6-7 bigs, offensively rebounded almost a third of the misses from their own basket. The Tigers, by the numbers, also got pushed to the perimeter, since star guard Malcolm Christie tried about 80 percent of shots from deep on his way to a 25-point night.
As an aesthete, I like the AUS’s quick guard-driven style of play. it just doesn’t always translate well to the Final 8, although St. Francis Xavier nearly solved the riddle last season.
Fourth quarter: Can’t we all get a bronze?
I am tired. The clocks are going ahead. And the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln.
One last thing. Bronze-medal games should be played. Both teams want to win, but sometimes they simmer with the defensive intensity, so there’s always a chance the winning team will hit a hundred. But it’s just too mean to have the fourth-place team leave bare-necked.
How does adding a medal for the fourth-place team since? The high school association in Ontario has an antique bronze medal at its team sport championships (sometimes also called the “copper medal”). I like it. It’s weird and different.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
Next Year Country?
You know what happens if those drums stop? BASS SOLO!!!