Win-and-in Wednesday in Unibball with Queen's at home once, Queen's at home twice...
The Tall Yellow Guys are in the driver's seat; the last four women's teams standing form an Elite East; and Brock's skipper choreographed a boom-ousted two-step from his hoops troupe.
To fray is the thing. A wire-to-wire win that was also a white-knuckler was right to spec for dramaturgy. A path to the nationals was further paved, with Queen’s Gaels such as Michael Kelvin II, Fofo Adetogun, and Luka Syllas providing the oomphilication marks on that first test of the playoffs.
Huh?
Go, Gaels, Go.
The dance card for OUA’s Win-and-in Wednesday is set. As part of a rooting exercise to get into this while letting biases show, and attempting no serious analysis of any kind, this off-brand athletics supporter tracked five out of the eight Ontario University Athletics basketball quarterfinals held on Saturday.1
In before times, 11 or 12 days out from nationals, there would have been an attempt at some Bracketology. I am not in the Canadian university hoops loop enough to have a blue’s clue at whether Queen’s has a path to a No. 1 seed. More about not having more about that in the fourth quarter of the post.
It all shook out very well. Kingston has a chance to pack the ARC with two of every kind of fan to see both Queen’s teams earn Final 8 tickets. Both have a team from — ominous voice-over — downtown Toronto standing in their way. The women’s team is playing the TMU Bold; the men’s Gaels have to get by the U of T Varsity Blues.
Downtown T.O. against a school where everyone is from “just outside Toronto.” Yeah, that will stick.
The other go-to-Final 8 affrays are Ottawa-Carleton in the women’s competition; Brock at Western in the men’s. I will allow for this to seem like quite a Canadian conundrum. Fealty to regionalism dictates that the semifinals determine who goes to nationals. Provincialism demands there still be a trophy game — Wilson Cup and Critelli Cup — to decide a champion of Ontario.
Old hoser hoopheads suspect that teams with their eyes on the grand prize, a national championship, are very mid about the OUA title. Lose that game, and you sometimes gain a more favorable sleep schedule in the Final 8, where you have to win three games on short rest. Here is a summary of the lay of the land.
First quarter: Queen’s survives and advances
As you might suspect, Queen’s 85-79 win against the McMaster Marauders in a matinee men’s game drew most of my energy.2 It was the only one where F-bombs were hurled toward a screen.
The Syllas brothers commanded control of the cup: Luka Syllas offensively, Cole Syllas defensively. Wings Michael Kelvin II and Fofo Adetogun played like they should have a sponsorship deal with Flexvolt — they upped their energy to whatever was needed at a particular time and spot on the floor.
Gameflow-wise, it teetered on the brink of a rout and tottered on the brink of a shock defeat. The Gaels opened with a 9-0 run. McMaster was twice within a bucket of the lead in the second half, getting within two in the 40th minute after cashing in an extra possession afforded by an uncalled loose-ball fool.
This is probably good for the Gaels. The road should not be easy. Channel Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own saying, “The HARD, is what makes it GREAT!”
The Gaels — HEY SAGER, NO ANALYSIS — were credited with 27 assists on their 32 baskets. Even accounting for home-scorer cooking, that’s good. Seventeen of those apples, or dimes depending on your lingo, came from a Syllas. And the way Queen’s closed out was wild. As McMaster pressed and launched threes, Adetogun seemed to alight from everywhere to snare a rebound, or move the ball through a press-break. Kelvin ran the baseline to crush three alley-oop dunks in the fourth quarter. He also had a corrrrrrrrrner three when Queen’s pushed out at the start of the period while McMaster rested leading scorer Steve Demagus.
Luka Syllas went for 31 and seven assists, with a true shooting percentage of 70.4.3 He did that while trying only one three-ball (it missed) and having only one shooting foul called against his checks, which means either McMaster’s guards were angels or some whistle-swallowing occurred. Seventy percent TSP without any threes and nary a trip to the line? What decade are we in?
Cole Syllas, the big guard; it was almost like he was doing a Luka Dončić or Nikola Jokić bit but only in the defensive and teammate-support phases. When do you ever see someone finish with counting stats of five points, 10 assists, seven rebounds, and four blocked shots? Adetogun also deserved a double-double, with nine points, 14 rebounds and five assists. One point shy, but one win closer.
It is great to see a Tricolour team playing basketball beautifully and beastily. Again, McMaster coming to play was a plus. It shorts them to affix a “plucky” here. The Marauders played desperate in a good way by trying 42 three-balls, over 50 percent above their regseason average. Queen’s tried almost 50 percent fewer than usual.
Again, that’s good for Queen’s. Save those threes for the U of T on Wednesday.
Second quarter: who will be the Caitlin Clark of our Elite East?
Treat this as a sweet sample of progress Wednesday night, Ottawa and Natsuki Szczokin, No. 1-ranked defending champion Carleton led by Kali Pocrnic, square off in a go-to-nats game. Would that they could move this to a larger venue and create a big off-campus showcase… but TD Place, where the Capital Hoops Classic is held, is needed for a PWHL Ottawa game that night. C’est la vie.
Two big crowds for women’s sports on the same night. We might need to come up with codenames. I have a Simpsons Trivia night at the same time, so I’ll be Cueball.
I am a sucker for lightning-quick lead guards with that je ne sais quoi air if-you’re-on-their-hip-they’re-gone quickness taking over in the playoffs. By the numbers, and from limited views, Pocrnic and Szczokin both have bona fides. There is some U Sports-scale star power there; let’s celebrate that.
The FIBA-rules Canadian game is still a haven for scrappy guards. McMaster gave No. 1 Carleton a push, and the 5-foot-3 Pocrnic went off for a season-best 40 points with zero turnovers. She was north of 60 in TSP despite not being awarded one free throw. McMaster, guessing here, couldn’t foul someone they couldn’t catch.
At 30-1 on the season, Carleton probably has a Final 8 ticket punched as either an OUA rep or the at-large team. Still, city rivalry, and Ottawa and Szczokin account for that non-crooked number in Carleton’s loss column. That did occur in the last game before Christmas, and Carleton won the big-venue rematch.
The pearl-clutcher posits with the Gee-Gees coming out of their quarterfinal win at Waterloo are recovery and depth. Szczokin went for 21 points with four assists in 26 minutes. The bench, though, contributed only three points, and it was chippy with 46 fouls called. Only 18 were whistled in McMaster-Carleton, and then the Ravens got to do their cooldown and go home instead of getting on a bus home.
But hey, these student-athletes are young and know how to take care of themselves.
So, segueing from welts to Emma Weltz, the Queen’s guard, the women’s basketball Gaels have their win-and-in game against a TMU team that goes to the Final 8 on the fairly regular.
Toronto Metro, as I am wont to call the TMU Bold since their name is so artless and corporatist,4 won their 2022 national title on Queen’s home floor. So there is that with coach Carly Clarke’s charges. One would expect Metro to be ready. But they are a young team relying on second- and third-season contributors.
And, since then, Queen’s has decisive wins against Metro. Fingers crossed the fifth-year foursome of Weltz, guaranteed 20-and-10 post scorer Julia Chadwick, and guards Laura Donovan and Bridget Mulholland find that optimal point for their last home game. They turned it on when they needed it to dismiss Guelph. The spread got to as large as 29 in a 68-51 win.
Third quarter: Carleton needed those stinkin’ Badgers
Rules of thumb: Brock is always there to do a solid for Carleton, and the games that end up being the most entertaining are often those in which you do not care who wins. Both Saturday evening OUA men’s quarterfinals — Brock 81, Ottawa 58; U of T 59, Ontario Tech 54 — affirmed that while relating to the late ’00s in some total self-indulgent way.
Brock Badgers coach Willy Manigat steered his hoops crew to road playoff wins against both of his former teams in his hometown. Manigat shone on both sides of the Capital Hoops rivalry, so this created a “delightfully specific stat,” as fellow Gee-Gees play-by-play alumnus Greg Gallagher noted.
I will refrain from theorizing how the same Badgers who looked awesome, athletic, long, and fast while suppressing Ottawa are also just above .500 on the season. They have won five in a row since a 20-point home loss against Western three weeks ago, and the playoff rematch will be in Western’s gym. Hey, big gulps!
Anyway, it is damn impressive that Brock held a team that was ranked No. 1 in the nation for nine weeks this season to single digits in both the third and fourth quarters of a do-or-done game.
The shortest Badgers starter is 6-foot-4, and collectively they affected almost everything Ottawa tried during une deuxième période d'enfer pour les Gee-Gees. It almost seems like a misprint to note that Brock and 6-6 senior floor leader Jordan Tchuente outscored Ottawa 43-13 in the final 20 minutes.
Limiting a team to 13 points in a half? In this economy? You cannot make this up: Manigat wore No. 13 in his playing days for both schools.
One could theorize a little more about the strange psych job with Brock’s season arcs. In ’22, they earned the No. 1 seed for the Final 8. They were bounced by No. 8 seed Saskatchewan in the quarters. Now they could go to nationals as a 16-defeat team.
Now, of course, why does this work out for Carleton, whom the Badgers also ousted to guarantee a new national champion? Well, it is kind of funny that Carleton falls, and with the drawbridge down and the palace unguarded, Ottawa ends up falling into the Rideau Canal.5
It is also a callback to 2008. Carleton’s five-season reign ended with a double-overtime defeat against Acadia on semifinal Saturday at the Final 8. It was the second semifinal, though, and they had an earlyish gold medal game per the requests of The Score. Seventh-seeded Brock won the day and the natty.6
Meantime, the Tall Yellow Guys draw U of T. Famous last words, but it seems like a better matchup for Queen’s than… right, NO ANALYSIS.
With no rooting interest, the low-scoring win U of T ground out against the emerging Ontario Tech Ridgebacks was fun to watch. The downtown Toronto vs. the 905, the oldest university in Ontario versus one of the newest, had the energy that we need to bottle and pour into every gym.
In the CEBL last summer, the Scarborough Shooting Stars used the U of T gym, and you didn’t have to be there to see it felt like showtime … DJs, a crowd oohing and aahing at big plays to provide the Greek chorus, and sightings of local celebrities who are world-famous all over parts of Canada.
A scan of the Varsity Blues’ docket shows they play in the 80s and 90s under coach Madhav Trivedi, whose coaching CV includes a stint with the Gaels. Ontario Tech kept them to under 60 with 45 percent TSP, and the Blues found a way thanks to dynamite drop-ins from reserves such as Ryan Rudnick and Dane Quest.
At least someone near Queen’s Park can get it done, eh?
Ontario Tech came agonizingly close. Their 6-foot-10 forward Ayub Nurhussien had a potential game-tying layup just slide off the iron in the closing seconds after a defender rerouted him ever so subtly. That’s the stuff that ain’t in the boxscore but you love to see.
One always welcomes a new team rising. Ontario Tech went 19-11 this season after winning only 8 of 74 games as the young pops going through their pandemic-disrupted formative years. Their point guard Zubair Seyed is a tough check and they defeated Queen’s in the fall, so yeah, sighs of relief that the Gaels avoid.
Fourth quarter: why no Bracketlogy?
Back in The CIS Blog days, yours truly would try to take a stab at forecasting the Final 8 brackets, starting about four weeks out from our selection Sunday. And that stab at ’er would always end up with needing to rinse the blood of one’s toga.
It was a case of being foiled by my slight tendency to knowitallism. There was also a sense that people took anyone explaining the seeding guidelines for the nationals as apologizing for said guidelines.
To the latter point, I just figured Canadian university sport has enough detractors and indifference-makers already. Those of us invested must not spread bad info. The seeding guidelines are public information and anyone can learn and try to apply them. It’s a very small scale of understanding the U.S. Electoral College, right down to the Truth that a team that removes all doubt by winning when it needs to should not have to worry about it.
Anyway, as a reminder, the winners of all four conferences are guaranteed to be seeded no lower than No. 6. This is the so-called Québec Rule . That conference has not had a men’s national champion since the 1998 Bishop’s Gaiters.7
The principles, which are not synonymous with ironclad rules, state “conference match-ups will be avoided in the first round for the top 2 qualifiers from each conference.” And “results of conference playoffs must be respected,” which can mean that the champ generally goes ahead of the runner-up.
Holy grey area, Batman.
In practice, this can mean being the No. 1 seed in an eight-team single elimination bracket is about as welcome as winning the Presidents’ Trophy in the National Hockey League. That 8 seed is a either host team with a home-court advantage, and the game is at night for attendance purposes. Or it’s a host-region team that is better adjusted to a time zone change and the venue. And both will be playing with nothing to lose.
Something to think about!
I will try to write another notebook post about this early Thursday, okay?
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
February 24-25, 2024
Hamilton, Ont.
One conflicted with a book event featuring Morgan Campbell and Sheila Murray. One involved a certain school in London, Ont.; and the video would not load for another game.
That’s right; the men’s team opened for the women. As they should. The women’s basketball Gaels are two-time U Sports medallists (silver last season, bronze in 2022).
OK, brief statnerdery. True shooting percentage (TSP%) is a team’s point total, divided by two, into total field goal attempts. It incorporates free throws and three-pointers. My preference is effective field-goal percentage (eFG%), which only factors in three-pointers. Since refereeing and foul trouble get more attention in the playoffs, today we will use TSP. This space will never use the old field-goal percentage, a relic of the old days.
Which suits downtown Toronto perfectly, if you think about it. Hey, there’s another condo tower going up.
Here one gets an image of That ‘70s Show and every time Kelso (Ashton Kutcher) fell off the water tower. It might be one of the few parts of that sitcom franchise we can keep.
Only one of the four teams who have defeated Carleton at the men’s Final 8 have won their next game. That would be the 2010 Saskatchewan Huskies, who beat UBC in an all-Canada West title tilt.
I might still have DVDs of Acadia’s 82-80 win against Carleton. The ’08 Ravens were undefeated in U Sports (then CIS) play, but there were hints even they wondered if they could replace what Osvaldo Jeanty brought to the party as their closer and on-the-ball defrayer.
Acadia came in with a formidable frontcourt formed by Achuil Lual and Leonil Saintil, and some guards who would shoot from anywhere. They had an opening 15-4 surge, and it was evident that Carleton was taking on water. Acadia would shoot 55 percent from the floor across 30 minutes of a taut third and fourth quarters and two sessions of bonus basketball, and still only got out of there with a two-point win. That’s how good someone has to play to beat Peak Carleton.
I was just glad the Ottawa Sun assigned Chris Stevenson to write the on-deadline story.
So none since the OUA East-Québec regseason interlock ended after the 2000-01 season. Why do I have Idea Face?