The fun part for Carleton now is figuring out which team shows up.
The Ravens, who advanced at the CIS Final 8 with an 83-72 win over the UQAM Citadins, face a Saturday semi-final vs. Saskatchewan Huskies team which astounded for one half and confounded for the other vs. Windsor. Call it glib, but Acadia played the same way in its Friday first-rounder two years ago before that double-overtime drama — an 82-80 Axemen victory.
The Ravens, meantime, were their own toughest critics after getting 17 points from Kevin McCleery and 14 each from Willy Manigat and Elliot Thompson.
“Defensively, we were brutal,” said guard Mike Kenny, who had nine points (all on threes). “We gave up way too many offensive rebounds. We scored the ball, but offensively we were kind of tentative … you got to extract some positives from that, we did pretty well on offence, especially when (UQAM) got squirrelly and started running extra guys at Kevin, I thought we handled that really well.”
Saskatchewan is 15-1 dating back to January and along with Windsor, beat the other two semi-finalists, Calgary and UBC, at the Canada West championship.
“They’re the best team here,” Ravens coach Dave Smart said. “They won Canada West at UBC, they’re dominant, they’re a veteran team as much as they haven’t been here (to the Final 8).”
The Huskies have been a minor miracle of sorts already, gelling with a backcourt led by a 27-year-old husband and father of four at point guard, Michael Linklater — a role model for aboriginal youth in Saskatoon — and confident Californian, Showron Glover.
Forward Clint and Chris Unsworth were raised by a single dad, Huskies alum Art — you might have seen him rocking a white Stetson in the Huskies section — after their mother died in a farm accident in 1995. It almost seems rude to evoke Brennan Jarrett, a 19-year-old guard who collapsed during a pickup game in December 2008.
“It took us a while to find an identity as group — a lot of hard work, a lot of soul-searching,” is how Huskies coach Greg Jockims phrased it. “We knew we were a good team, but to be great, championship-calibre, you have to have that team chemistry … our core group has done a great job of being leaders as the season’s gone along.”
The nuts-and-bolts basketball part is the Huskies lost to Carleton in November — ancient history — and have of late beat the other two Final 8 semi-finalists, UBC and Calgary, before outlasting Windsor 71-68 on Friday.
“The No. 1 thing against Carleton is rebounding,” Jockims said.
The Ravens also have their shooting stroke. Thompson had been 0-for-10 from three-point land in the playoffs before Friday, although you’d never know. (Kenny joked, “That’s a weird stat — he’s always chirping at me in practice that he’s the better shooter.”)
UQAM, which got 15 points from Arthaud Plesius and 14 from Gatineau native Eric Cote-Kougnima, played well. But the writing was on the wall in the first half when McCleery tossed in a straight-outta-1945 one-hander after the Ravens lost track of the shot clock.
That’s the kind of night it was. Now the Ravens and hopeful Huskies start at zero.
