A rare set of midweek games will close out the sa国际传媒 West basketball regular season for the University of Victoria Vikes tonight and Thursday on Ken and Kathy Shields Court at CARSA gymnasium.
The games were originally scheduled for Dec. 1-2 but postponed when all Thompson Rivers University sports were shutdown that week due to a tragedy in the program when TRU volleyball player Owyn McInnis was killed and two other WolfPack volleyball players suffered life-altering injuries in a multiple-vehicle collision Nov. 29 near the TRU campus in Kamloops.
The UVic men, the top-ranked team in the U Sports national top-10 poll, are 15-3 in sa国际传媒 West and can clinch the conference regular-season title and top seed for the playoffs with a win. The Calgary Dinos and Winnipeg Wesman are both 15-5 and have concluded their regular seasons.
“These are playoff-type games and we can improve our seeding for the post-season,” said Vikes head coach Craig Beaucamp, whose team has won seven consecutive games.
The games are even bigger for the WolfPack, who are in 13th place at 6-12 in the 17-team sa国际传媒 West and find themselves one spot out of the 12th and final playoff position currently co-held by the Mount Royal Cougars and University of the Fraser Valley Cascades at 8-12. TRU will have to sweep UVic in its final two games to create a three-way tie for the final playoff berth, which would then be decided on tiebreakers.
“TRU is still alive and is a desperate team fighting for the playoffs,” said Beaucamp.
It’s an old sporting adage that desperate teams are dangerous teams.
“We know they are going to be hungry and we have to match that mindset,” said UVic star guard Diego Maffia.
The Vikes also have their hunger.
“We want to win and take first place in the regular season and be on top of the conference heading into the playoffs,” said Maffia.
The mercurial Maffia, the defending sa国际传媒 West MVP, will win his second consecutive conference scoring title and heads into the final two games with a 27.1 points-per-game average.
“Individually, I’m happy with the season I’m having, but we will not be pleased unless we win the national championship.”
The Vikes are guaranteed a bye into the playoff quarter-finals. The sa国际传媒 West tournament runs Feb. 21-25 in Winnipeg.
Meanwhile, the 10th-place UVic women’s team (8-10) takes a four-game winning streak into the set against TRU (2-16). UVic has clinched a playoff berth in the sa国际传媒 West tournament Feb. 21-25 in Abbotsford while the WolfPack are eliminated and out of contention.
UVic’s turnaround, after losing their first seven conference games of the season, has been keyed by sa国际传媒 West top-10 scorers Abigail Becker (14.7 points-per-game) and Tana Pankratz (14.4 points-per-game) while Mimi Sigue has been prevalent on the boards with 7.3 rebounds per game.
The UVic-TRU women’s games are at 5 p.m. tonight and 3:30 p.m. Thursday with the men’s Vikes and WolfPack teams tipping-off at 7 p.m. tonight and 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
