ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 77 UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA 64
The drive from Antigonish to Halifax in Nova Scotia is about two hours and it seemed almost the entire town made the trek Saturday night to the Scotiabank Centre.
The Atlantic champion St. Francis Xavier X-Men from Antigonish, backed by a roaring crowd of 7,350, defeated the Canada West champion and top-ranked University of Victoria Vikes 77-64 in the U Sports men’s basketball national championship semifinals.
“We have the best fans in the league,” said player-of-the-game and U Sports defensive player-of-the-year David Muenkat of the X-Men in the post-game media conference. “Even in our home games the atmosphere is so contagious. There was a lot of energy and we are extremely grateful for all the fans who showed up tonight. They played a big part in this.”
It was, essentially, a home game for St. Francis Xavier but the Vikes downplayed that as the reason for the loss.
“We have been in loud venues before and we didn’t notice the crowd,” said UVic head coach Craig Beaucamp.
These X-Men didn’t need Wolverine, Storm or Cyclops. It was simply too much of Muenkat and the rest of the smothering X-Men defenders, who were in the faces of the Vikes all night long.
“They are a very physical and athletic team, and are highly disruptive on defence,” said Beaucamp.
“Scoring against them was tough.”
UVic hit only 27.6 per cent from the field as SFX led 26-14 at the end of the first quarter, 43-36 at the half and 61-54 after three quarters.
“It was competitive but we came up short. There are no excuses,” said Beaucamp. “We needed to make more shots and had a lot of ins-and-outs.”
Many of those came from Diego Maffia, the mercurial Canada West MVP, who hit only one of his 11 three-point attempts. When you live by the Diego three-point dagger, you die by it when it fails to slice through the netting. Maffia went 5-17 overall from the field and hit all nine of his free throws to finish with 20 points.
Elias Ralph added 16 points, Claremont grad Ethan Boag 11 and Renoldo Robinson nine for UVic. Graduating forward and rebounding machine Dominick Oliveri did his part, hauling in 24 boards in his second-to-last game as a Vike heading into today’s bronze-medal game against the University of Ottawa Gee Gees.
Dondre Reddick and Avan Nava led the X-Men with 17 points each.
The dynastic Carleton Ravens defeated the Gee Gees 81-75 in an all-Ottawa first national semifinal game on the day and will meet the X-Men in the championship game today at 2 p.m. PT.
The Ravens are after a 17th national championship since 2003, and have won 10 of the past 11 national titles, including the last three in a row.
UVic was seeking its first national championship since 1997 when led by forward Eric Hinrichsen, the Campbell River product, who went on to represent Canada in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. UVic won seven consecutive in the 1980s with rosters that included Craig Higgins, Kelly Dukeshire, Phil Ohl, Ted Anderson, Dave Sheehan and Olympians Eli Pasquale, Gerald Kazanowski and Greg Wiltjer. But the awaited ninth national championship in team history has been put on hold for at least one more year.
