RYERSON 82, VICTORIA 68
The University of Victoria Vikes repeat fourth-place finish in Canadian men’s university basketball perhaps should be put in perspective. After losing seven players, including first-team all-Canadian Terrell Evans, from the last season’s CIS national Final Four team, few expected the Vikes to return in 2015.
But that they did, bowing to mighty Carleton in the national semifinals, before finishing off with an 82-68 loss to the host Ryerson Rams in the bronze-medal game Sunday in Toronto.
“It was quite a journey to get back here again this year,” said UVic head coach Craig Beaucamp, who loses only two players to graduation this time, but one of them is six-foot-10 first-team all-Canadian post Chris McLaughlin.
The Carleton Ravens won their fifth consecutive national crown, and their incredible 11th in the last 13 years, by dismantling the cross-town rival Ottawa Gee-Gees 93-46 in the CIS championship game played Sunday at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, which is the former Maple Leaf Gardens.
With the top-three finishers in the CIS all from Ontario, the results were part of a larger narrative taking place in Canadian basketball. When UVic was winning seven-consecutive CIS titles in the 1980s, the best CIS teams and players such as Olympians Eli Pasquale, Gerald Kazanowski and Greg Wiltjer from UVic and Karl Tilleman of the Calgary Dinos came out of Western Canada (although Pasquale was originally from Ontario). Even the best Canadian NCAA players, such as Howard Kelsey, came out of the West.
The power in Canadian men’s hoops has now clearly shifted to Ontario.
“The OUA [Ontario conference] is deep and athletic,” said Beaucamp.
“It definitely had most of the strength in the country this year. But never mind the CIS, most of the Canadians going south [to the U.S. collegiate NCAA] are also from Ontario.”
With few exceptions — such as Kelly Olynyk of Kamloops — almost all the impressive recent influx of Canadian players to the NBA is from the Toronto area. That is reverberating though all of Canadian hoops. The era of Western dominance, which reached its apex with Steve Nash of Victoria twice being named NBA MVP, appears truly over.
“You can see how the [extensive] grassroots of the sport in Ontario is playing out at the university level, too,” said Beaucamp.
How can the Canada West conference respond?
“We have a challenge in Canada West by the number of teams we have now [17] and getting the quality [players] needed to field [strong teams],” noted Beaucamp.
Regardless of CIS landscape, the Canada West-champion Vikes aim to stay near the top of it. There is added incentive with the 2016 Final 8 being held in Vancouver. If the Vikes make it next year, it would be their fourth consecutive trip to the CIS championship tournament.
Beaucamp, who has done a fine job in his 12 seasons at the Vikes helm, is a five-time Canada West coach-of-the-year award winner and the winningest coach in UVic men’s basketball history. That’s saying something since he follows in the footsteps of Ken Shields, who won seven CIS titles, and Guy Vetrie, who won one national championship. Beaucamp took UVic to the 2006 CIS championship game before losing 73-67 to, who else, but Carleton.
Beaucamp has recently made good use of U.S. recruits such as Evans and returning point-guard Marcus Tibbs. Maybe the biggest story of the 2015 CIS tournament was the emergence of six-foot-eight, third-year player Grant Sitton, the tall but stiletto-like forward from Oregon, who was outstanding in all three games coming off the bench. Canada West MVP McLaughlin closed out his CIS career with 22 points against Ryerson in the bronze-medal game Sunday while the returning Sitton added 13 as the only other Vikes player in double scoring figures. Jahmal Jones led the Rams with 25.
Meanwhile, brothers Philip and Thomas Scrubb from Carleton joined an exclusive circle Sunday. The natives of Richmond, and sons of former UVic star guard Lloyd Scrubb, became only the fourth and fifth players in CIS men’s basketball history to win five national championships. The others are two-time Olympian Pasquale and Dave Sheehan from the UVic dynasty of the 1980s and Osvaldo Jeanty of Carleton between 2003 and 2007.
