The Gaels earn a dancing double; and let's shoot around some Unibball Bracketology
Never let it be said that the Tall Yellow Guys do anything the easy way, which can only be a good thing for Queen's. Also, can you figure out who should get the U Sports Final 8 wild-card berths?
Let’s not bury the lede, eh? Only one university in Canada can say both of its basketball teams earned tickets to nationals1 — after the hooping women and men of Queen’s University at Kingston showed poise counts, albeit in quite differing ways.
The day-late, many-dollars-short narrative should begin with the women’s basketball Gaels. Steady and reliable FTW! Have both six-foot posts, Julia Chadwick and Mikayla McFarlane, pick up four fouls? Pas de problème! They ousted Toronto Metro by a comfortable enough margin. Coach Claire Meadows’ club has the look of a winnin’ machine, and they needed some kind of name à la the ones Australia and New Zealand have for their national teams. We can workshop that later. Officially, the Gaels are 27-4 on the season, including a 13-win streak against all competition outside the 613 area code.
Of course, the nationally No. 1-ranked team plays in that area code and has had the Gaels’ number the last two seasons. Details.
Words would fail to do justice to the double-overtime drama in front of a sellout crowd in the men’s tilt. It was a Game of Hoarse, especially for veteran Voice of the Gaels Bill Miklas, who deserves a lifetime supply of tea and honey for commentating 90 minutes of postseason basketball solo.
The at-large berth ace was likely up Queen’s sleeve before they took the court against Toronto on Wednesday, but it’s always better to secure it and share it with your public rather than what for a phone call on Selection Sunday. The deliverables at decisive moments were easy to discern. For instance, the veteran lefty three-baller Cam Betts hit from the corner on the first play of the second OT to put the Gaels ahead for good. Near the end of the game’s 49th minute, he hit again to take the lead out to six points, then, while playing with four fouls, timed his closeout to alter a shot by 6-foot-7 Somachi Agbapu, sticking U of T with an unaffordable empty possession.
The margin got down to two, but that is where Luka Syllas gets called on as a closer. He faded away over tenacious D from Nadav Sahar to finish his 39-point, seven-assist night, and get the Gaels through. They had that one all the way, from the 49¾-minute mark of a 40-minute basketball game onward.
With that secondhand confidence, I feel safe enough to mostly project the Final 8 brackets for next week, without the wild-card selections. You will see.
First quarter: projecting the men’s Final 8
AITA for tracking that the first U Sports men’s basketball championship held in Québec, not far from what went down on the Plains of Abraham, could have the top two seeds be teams named after a long-reigning monarch — presumptive 1-seed Victoria and presumptive 2-seed Queen’s, who can see Wolfe Island from their campus?
Then throw in Brock, named after a British general in The War of 1812. Dalhousie has a weird sibling dynamic with the University of King’s College. High-tea-larious.
I can make those jokes, as an equal-opportunity troller. There has been no amount of amusement when the Trois-Rivières Patriotes rep OUA men’s hockey at nationals; I’ve cringed more than once at hearing “Three Rivers” on a webcast from one of les maudits anglos on a student webcast.
Gotta respect the hustle and the confidence Trois-Rivières has to hit the ice in these hockey costumes that make me wanna run to the drugstore for orange sherbet, pistachio ice cream, and charcoal-whitening toothpaste.2
The projection for the men’s Final 8 presumes home-team wins in the Québec league final between UQAM and Concordia, and the totes-necessary OUA title tilly between already-qualified Brock and Queen’s. Presuming ain’t predicting.
Slotting the Brock Badgers is at least as challenging as playing ’em. Badgers court leader Jordan Tchuente went for a 26-13 double-double during another away-gym ambition-quashing win, this time against Western. Should the Badgers do that against Queen’s on Saturday — completing a quad of quashes!! — they will look all the more dangerous. But win then juar bumps them to the 20th-best record in the nation (.543, 19-16) and Queen’s would be third (.813, at 26-6). Almost all of the top third of teams are between them.
Meantime, with UQAM and Concordia, every starter knows what flavor of gum every opposing starter chews, and what bodywash they use. The Québec final will be the fourth matchup between the city rivals in 24 days. See why we need an Ontario-Québec superconference in basketball, hockey, and football?
Second quarter
If only unibball had the profile it deserves. There would be debates over whether Saskatchewan — #TeamCarly — or Carleton — #TeamKali — should get the 1-seed. Also, welcome to the party, UFV Cascades.
The big two are 1 and 1A, each defeated just once. Carly Ahlstrom-led Saskatchewan (28-1 overall), at last report, graded out better than Kali Porcnic-paced Carleton in fancystats class. Presuming Carleton wins at home against Queen’s on Saturday, and Laval can beat by Bishop’s to take the Q-conference, the bracket might look like this.
The rules only require that automatic qualifiers from the same league should not meet in the quarterfinal. It is OK if 8 vs. 1 or 7 vs. 2 matchups involve conference opponents.
The elephant on that seeding committee call, and this not meant to impugn the integrity of the selectors, is whether to group or separate the reps from OUA and Canada West, the two-berth leagues. I don’t know who’s on that call, but I trust their integrity and imagine they treat it super-seriously.
But there are philosophical preferences, and there are attendance considerations. When I do this for grins, I prefer splitting conference reps — which here are Carleton and Queen’s, Alberta and Saskatchewan — since it might be fun if they had a rematch in the final. But having them on the same side also creates the possibility of driving more interest in the Semifinal Saturday doubleheader, and build interest through to the final.
Tough call; I am glad they have other, better people deciding.
The margins between berth winners Alberta, Queen’s , Saint Mary’s, and (most likely) Laval are very narrow. The trio from back east have better overall records than the Pandas, and none are likely come in having suffered a lopsided defeat in their last game before nationals. But none of them had to contend with Saskatchewan, either!
Third quarter: A wild-card cluster fudge
You would not ask the United States Supreme Court to interpret the language around choosing at-large teams to fill the brackets. Let alone pick the teams in a season where teams that ran out front ended up being two or more playoff wins shy of winning berths.
Goodness knows what current SCOTUS would do with instructions to the men’s seeding committee to “consider the performance of each team in each criterion and rank them accordingly. The committee has a degree of discretion in its rankings within each criterion.”
The problem at hand is the Cluster Criterion, No. 10. There will be six ‘one win away’ teams. The Ottawa Gee-Gees are in the ‘two away’ group, but rank first in 5-of-9 other categories, and are tied for first in a sixth. But they lost their only playoff game by 23 points at home.
Does the cluster rule affect the other nine? Can’t tell. I’m not even sure I know how to read sometimes. Maybe I just memorized a lot of words.
The Calgary Dinos are in the ‘OWA’ group, but are outright first in only one criterion. Another OWA is St. Francis Xavier, second in three different criterion.
There is also a Calgary-sized program with the wild card for the women’s Final 8. That tourney uses a four-point criteria. There is a fifth that exists to break a tie. Guess what? There is a tie there.
Presuming Laval captures the Québec conference, Calgary will lead in two criterion, overall record and SRS, without belonging to the group of one-win-away teams. The UNB Reds would lead in the RPI; they are .00013 ahead of Calgary. And UNB is in the ‘OWA’ group.
Does that mean the Dinos and Reds both lead in two categories? The fifth category that exists is, “Winning percentage against teams in Top 12 of RPI.” Both are dead-even with 3-5 records.
If I was more looped in, I would go high-dudgeon about the prospect of rewarding Calgary, which had twice as much light competition than UNB.
Western Canada being cursed with so much geography affects the ability to schedule quality opponents. But Calgary had an inordinate number of games against bottom 20 teams, those ranked 29th or lower in usportshoops’ combined rankings report.
Calgary vs. the bottom 20: 17-0, 47.47 point differential
UNB vs. the bottom 20: 7-1, 24.38 point differential
That leaves Calgary with a 5-0 mark against the middle class, compared to UNB going 12-2. The tournament is in Edmonton, so I don’t have to worry about which team’s participation helps the attendance, so again, good thing it’s not up to me.
Fourth quarter
How do you talk about Laval, 9-17 on the season, having a spot in the Final 8 without sounding like a troll? You can’t.
Being versed in the lore of the Canadian Hockey League has created a whole litany of Memorial Cup host cities whose teams exited early from league playoffs. In this case, though, having a host who is a sub-.500 team seems absurd. Laval also ranks 31st in SRS, 33rd in RPI, and 34th in ELO, so one gets the drift even without knowing what those abbreviations mean.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
Earned is the operative word. A host team does not necessarily earn it.
Some people might think that those would be perfect hockey colours for the Miami Hurricanes. Wrong! The Florida A&M Rattlers are also orange and green, and starting a hockey team at that HBCU would create a college hockey rivalry with Tennessee State. “Make it happen, Cap’n,” as Darryl on The Office might say.