The University of Victoria Vikes could not tear down a dynasty Friday night as the Carleton Ravens won their U Sports men’s basketball national championship quarter-final game 94-77 in Edmonton.
Carleton is the two-time defending national champion from 2019 and 2020 (the 2021 tournament was not held due to the pandemic) and has won an incredible 15 national championships since 2003, including nine of the last 10. The Ravens long ago eclipsed UVic’s seven-consecutive national championships in the 1980s to become the greatest dynasty in Canadian university hoops history.
sa国际传媒 West-champion UVic, 17-1 in the regular season and now 3-1 in the playoffs, was ranked No. 2 but was drawn against Carleton after the Ravens fell to the seventh wildcard seed following their shock upset loss to the Queen’s Golden Gaels in the Ontario semifinals.
The Vikes, with a bright young team that is upcoming, will have to wait for their ninth national title. Their last was in 1997, led by 2000 Sydney Olympian Eric Hinrichsen. Graduating star guard Scott Kellum, named to the all-Canadian first team, will not go out a national champion but with his head held high after scoring a game-high 19 points Friday.
But the wildcard factor for the upset attempt was Vikes sophomore shooting-guard Diego Maffia. If a player ‘goes off,’ as they say in basketball, they can tilt the balance of a game against a more-touted opponent. It’s almost always a lethal pure outside shooter when that happens and the most likely Vikes candidate for that occurring was the mercurial Maffia, who has a big future ahead of him. But it didn’t rain points from three-point land for UVic as Maffia went four-for-16 yet the emerging backcourt prodigy still scored 18 points.
UVic, making its first appearance at nationals since 2015, is relegated to the consolation round and can place no higher than fifth as the championship tournament continues through Sunday.
The Alberta Golden Bears, ranked No. 3 and benefiting from a loss to UVic in the sa国际传媒 West final that unbeknownst to them at the time would help them avoid Carleton in the first round, easily got past Quebec-champion McGill 85-68.
In the other quarter-finals, the wildcard eighth-seed University of Saskatchewan Huskies shocked the top-seed and Ontario-champion Brock Badgers 77-73. Ontario runner-up and fifth-seed Queen’s, making the first appearance in the national championships in school history, made it a debut to remember with a 90-80 victory over the fourth-ranked and Atlantic-champion Dalhousie Tigers.
