Being the top seed in any sports tournament may be more burden than boost.
“When you get to nationals, there is not a lot of difference between the top and last seed,” said University of Victoria Vikes basketball head coach Craig Beaucamp.
That is true. At a nationals, every team is either a conference champion, runner-up or good enough to be picked a wildcard to even be there.
“It’s an elimination game and that’s all that matters whether you are No. 1 or No. 8,” said Beaucamp.
The top-ranked Vikes (20-3 in regular season and playoffs as sa国际传媒 West champions) open the U Sports national championship tournament with a quarter-final game today 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) at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, N.S.
“P.E.I. is a quality team and it has been knocking on the door the past two years,” said Beaucamp. “And, indirectly, they are a home team [along with Atlantic champion and the fourth-seed St. Francis Xavier X-Men of Antigonish, N.S.].”
There are no style points in playoff basketball. All that matters are results. Despite the incisive, almost graceful, offensive prowess of sa国际传媒 West and U Sports leading scorer Diego Maffia, it’s been the trench play that has brought UVic to this point.
“We have to bring that physicality and muscular play, that we have shown throughout the post-season, now into nationals,” said UVic rookie star Renoldo Robinson.
Beaucamp concurred: “Our run has been built as much on grittiness as it has been on finesse. There’s not a lot of separation of talent when it comes to playoff basketball. It comes down to the 50-50 plays and winning loose balls and rebounds.”
In playoff basketball, players like the Vikes’ leading rebounder Dominick Oliveri matter as much as a scorers such as Maffia.
“We have to play within ourselves, and play for each other, and be physical,” said Oliveri.
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’ near mind-numbing 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 crosstown rival University of Ottawa Gee Gees.
Second seed Ottawa (20-5) opens in the quarter-finals today against the seventh seed and sa国际传媒 West runner-up Winnipeg Wesmen (17-6), who UVic beat 95-80 in the sa国际传媒 West final last week on Ken and Kathy Shields Court in CARSA Gym.
The other quarter-finals feature the third-seed Ravens (20-5) playing the Quebec-champion and sixth seed L’Université du Québec à Montréal Citadins (12-6) and the wildcard-berth and fifth seed Queen’s University Golden Gaels (19-6) of Kingston, Ont., against Atlantic-champion and fourth-seed St. Francis Xavier (19-3).
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 dominating forward Eric Hinrichsen, the Campbell River product, who went on to represent sa国际传媒 in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
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, Ted Anderson, Dave Sheehan and Olympians Eli Pasquale, Gerald Kazanowski and Greg Wiltjer.
Meanwhile, Thomas Kennedy of the University of Windsor Lancers was named U Sports MVP on Thursday.
The Lancers forward beat out finalists Elijah Miller of UPEI, Sidney Tremblay-Lacombe of Laval and third-year Oak Bay High-grad Maffia, the latter the sa国际传媒 West MVP who was looking to become the first U Sports MVP from UVic since Hinrichsen in 1998-99.
