The committee that puts together the seeding for the U Sports men’s national basketball championship tournament is indicating that it believes the University of Victoria Vikes could become only the fourth team in two decades not named the Carleton Ravens to win the championship.
UVic is the top seed for the 2023 national championship tournament this week at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, N.S., after dispatching the University of Winnipeg Wesmen 95-80 in the Canada West championship game last weekend before a capacity crowd on Ken and Kathy Shields Court at CARSA Gymnasium.
The Vikes (20-3 in regular season and playoffs) open nationals with a quarter-final game Friday at 4 p.m. PT against the Atlantic conference finalist and eighth-seed University of Prince Edward Island Panthers (16-2 in regular season and playoffs).
The last time UVic was the top seed for nationals was in 2006, when the Vikes lost to Carleton 73-67 in the championship game. It is part of the Ravens’ remarkable run of 16 national titles since 2003. Carleton is the holder and has won three consecutive national championships and 10 in the past 11 seasons. The only other teams to have won a national title in Carleton’s two-decade era of dominance have been the Brock Badgers in 2008, Saskatchewan Huskies in 2010 and Calgary Dinos in 2018.
UVic is the first top seed from outside Ontario since the UBC Thunderbirds in 2011, but the Ravens won that year also. There-in is a cautionary tale for the Vikes. The Ravens go in as the No. 3 seed this year after losing the Ontario final to the No. 2 and cross-town rival University of Ottawa Gee Gees.
Second-seed Ottawa (20-5) opens in the quarter-finals Friday against the seventh-seed and Canada West runner-up Wesmen (17-6). The third-seed Ravens (20-5) have drawn the Quebec-champion and sixth-seed L’Université du Québec à Montréal Citadins (12-6). The other quarter-final features the at-large wildcard-berth recipient Queen’s University Golden Gaels (19-6) of Kingston, Ont., the fifth seed, against the Atlantic-champion and fourth-seed St. Francis Xavier X-Men (19-3) of Antigonish, N.S.
The semifinals are Saturday at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. PT and the championship game is Sunday at 2 p.m. PT. All games will be webcast live on CBC Sports.
UVic is after its first national championship since 1997 when led by the towering rebounding presence of forward Eric Hinrichsen, the Campbell River product, who cleaned the glass and represented Canada in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Guard Diego Maffia is the first Canada West MVP from UVic since Hinrichsen in 1998-99 and the Oak Bay High graduate could be named this week the first U Sports national MVP from the Vikes since Hinrichsen that same year.
Yet despite the almost poetically artistic on-court flashes provided this season by Maffia, the Vikes have proven more gritty than seamless overall. That’s a good thing in the playoffs.
“We have to bring that physicality and muscular play, that we have shown throughout the post-season, now into nationals,” said UVic rookie sensation Renoldo Robinson.
The Vikes are after the ninth national championship in team history. UVic won seven consecutive in the 1980s with rosters that included Craig Higgins, Kelly Dukeshire, Phil Ohl and 1984 L.A. and 1988 Seoul Olympians Eli Pasquale and Gerald Kazanowski.
