The University of Victoria Vikes are U Sports good in men’s basketball. They will find out this week how that translates against top-level NCAA Div. 1 good when they play 2023 NCAA tournament teams Xavier today and Penn State on Thursday in the Bahamas.
The Musketeers reached the Sweet Sixteen in March Madness this spring. The Nittany Lions made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament and produced Denver Nuggets’ second-round 2023 NBA draft pick Jalen Pickett. The Vikes were U Sports national semifinalists this past season and are the defending sa国际传媒 West champions.
“The size and physicality is the biggest difference [between NCAA Div. 1 and U Sports],” said UVic head coach Craig Beaucamp.
“There are 358 basketball teams in NCAA Div. 1 [more than 1,000 in NCAA Divs. 1 through 3] and Penn State is in the top-30 of those and Xavier in the top-16 and maybe higher.”
The key is not to let the games get out of reach, something easier to control for underdogs in soccer and hockey than in basketball.
“The first five minutes are going to be important,” said Beaucamp.
Doubts begin to creep into heavily-favoured hoops teams when underdogs stick with them in the early going, and strange things can happen.
“You turn it into smaller games and try to win those pieces,” said Beaucamp.
Both games are to be played at the Baha Mar Convention, Arts and Entertainment Centre as part of the bdG Sports tournament. The Bahamas national team will play Xavier and Penn State as part of the series.
“This is a great opportunity for our players and staff to spend time working together to build our team for the 2023-24 season,” Xavier head coach Sean Miller said in a statement.
NCAA basketball teams are allowed to take a foreign trip once every four years. Penn State head coach Mike Rhoades said the games against UVic and the Bahamas “can set the tone as we move forward.”
Beaucamp recently returned from Hungary, where he was assistant coach of the Canadian team that placed seventh in the 2023 FIBA U-19 World Cup. Beaucamp echoed Miller and Rhoades about the Bahamas tournament setting the tone for the upcoming university season: “This is an exciting early opportunity to establish our identity and get some team bonding done and leap-frog into the season.”
UVic will also host the annual Guy Vetrie Memorial Tournament from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 at CARSA gym featuring the Vikes, Carleton Ravens, Bishop’s Gaiters and the Alberta Golden Bears before heading to the Queen’s Tindall Invitational Oct. 20-22 in Kingston, Ont. The Vikes will open the sa国际传媒 West season at CARSA gym on Nov. 3-4 against the University of Calgary Dinos.
It has been a return to prominence for UVic, which won seven consecutive national championships in the 1980s with rosters that included Olympians Eli Pasquale, Gerald Kazanowski and Greg Wiltjer. The Vikes’ last national title was in 1997, led by Eric Hinrichsen, who represented sa国际传媒 in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The invitation to the Bahamas tournament is a sign of the rising stature of this Vikes team. Most such opportunities regarding Canadian university basketball teams have gone to the Carleton Ravens, who have won 17 national championships since 2003, including the last four in a row and 11 of the last 12. The Ravens are 43-57 against NCAA Div. 1 teams since 1999, according to Edilson J. Silva of BasketballBuzz.
The Vikes, with a youthful but talented roster loaded with rookies and sophomores last season and a signature player in third-year star Diego Maffia, went into the U Sports national tournament in the spring ranked No. 1 in the country but lost in the semifinals. UVic returns most of its largely Island-produced and talented players for the next few seasons and will be a national factor. The Vikes recaptured the attention of the city last season with capacity crowds returning to watch the team play on Ken and Kathy Shields Court at CARSA gym.
sa国际传媒 West MVP and U Sports scoring-champion Maffia, meanwhile, has rejoined the Vikes for the Bahamas trip after playing pro basketball over the spring and summer after being selected sixth overall in the first round by the Vancouver Bandits in the Canadian Elite Basketball League-U Sports draft in April. The CEBL, much like the pro soccer Canadian Premier League, has a program in which U Sports players can be drafted and play pro without losing their university eligibility. Maffia is entering his fourth season with the Vikes. “It’s Diego’s dream to play pro and he began finding out what life is going to be like as a pro,” said Beaucamp.
Maffia and his mates may be getting another life lesson, this one at the university level, this week in the Bahamas.
