The precocious University of Victoria Vikes shooting-guard Diego Maffia has gone from lighting up CARSA Gym to electrifying the country in being named the winner of the Mike Moser Award as U Sports men’s basketball most valuable player for 2023-24.
Maffia becomes the third UVic player to win the MVP award after the late 1984 Los Angeles and 1988 Seoul Olympian Eli Pasquale in 1983-84 and the 2000 Sydney Olympian Eric Hinrichsen in 1996-97 and 1998-99. Only in his fourth season, Maffia has a chance next season to join the likes of Hinrichsen, Olympian Karl Tilleman of Calgary, former national-team player J.D. Jackson of UBC, Patrick Jebbison of Brandon, Osvaldo Jeanty of Carleton and Kadre Gray of Laurentian as a two-time winner of the MVP award, which was inaugurated in 1974-75 with the late Mike Moser from the University of Waterloo the inaugural winner. Canadian national-team stalwart and European leagues pro Phil Scrubb holds the record with three MVP awards when at Carleton.
“It feels amazing to be considered in the same category as all those past MVPs,” said Maffia, by phone from Quebec City, where the top-seeded Vikes will play their U Sports national championship quarter-final game today at 3 p.m. PT against the host and eighth-seed Laval Rouge et Or.
“This is a personal goal I set for myself and it feels amazing to achieve it.”
Maffia, who puts up a dizzying array of long-range shots, has been compared to similar former pure shooters to have also been named Moser Award national MVPs such as Tilleman, Richard Bohne of Calgary and Danny Balderson of Lethbridge.
“No matter how outrageous the shots I put up, my teammates support me, and trust me to make the right reads,” said Maffia.
The Oak Bay-product has the complete trust of the coaching staff, as well.
“The MVP award is an unbelievable accomplishment and honour and Diego has earned all of it,” said UVic head coach Craig Beaucamp.
“People were not sure about him when he was younger because of his size [listed as a generous six-foot-one] and there were a lot of doubters that he could put up the kinds of numbers at the next level that he did in high school at Oak Bay. But he has done it at the university level to prove them all wrong.”
The mercurial Maffia averaged 26.7 points per game this season to lead the country in scoring for the second consecutive year. But all the accolades will feel incomplete without the big one, he said: “The MVP is a personal award. The biggest goal is the team national championship award and that will be handed out Sunday.”
Today’s other national quarterfinals have the second-seed Queen’s Golden Gaels meeting the seventh-seed Winnipeg Wesmen, the third-seed UQAM Citadins against the sixth-seed University of Ottawa Gee Gees and the fourth-seed Dalhousie Tigers against the fifth-seed and Brock Badgers.
The semifinals are Saturday and the national championship game Sunday.
UVic is after its ninth national title but the first since Campbell River’s Hinrichsen and the 1997 Vikes team.
