The Carleton Ravens men’s basketball team secured the top overall seed in Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Feb. 18 with a 73-65 win over the Lakehead Thunderwolves, ending an up-and-down regular season ranked first in the nation and on a seven-game winning streak.
As a product of their top seeding, the Ravens received a bye in the first round of the playoffs and ensured home court advantage in every game leading up to the OUA final, should they make it there.
Carleton got out to a slow start, trailing Lakehead by four points at the end of the first quarter and three points at the half. But that quickly changed in the third, when Aiden Warnholtz and Connor Vreeken scored eight points each to put the Ravens up 55-50.
Carleton closed out the win with an 18-15 fourth quarter.
Grant Shephard led the Ravens with 18 points and 13 rebounds, setting a new regular season rebound record in the process. He passed Brian Leonard’s record set in 1998-99 with a modest defensive rebound in the third quarter.
“He’s grown a lot as a player this year,” head coach Taffe Charles said. “We’ve asked him to step up in terms of his leadership, in terms of his defensive intensity and defensive responsibility on the boards and I think he’s done a great job. He’s been a big part of why we’ve been successful.”
Warnholtz broke another record by playing 731 minutes in this regular season, the most for the Ravens since at least 2004-05 when Osvaldo Jeanty played 691. Charles said it indicates Carleton’s lack of depth this year.
“It’s bittersweet, I guess, in a sense,” he said. “I know in the past a lot of guys who wanted to play a lot more minutes when they were here, so they’d probably be jealous of him.”
Carleton’s lack of depth was costly, with the team losing its most games in a single season since 1999-00. The season reached a low point in mid-January, when the Ravens lost back-to-back games for only the second time in the last 20 years on a weekend trip to Toronto.
Since then, the Ravens have rattled off seven straight wins, catapulting themselves to the top of the OUA for the sixth consecutive season.
“Although it wasn’t a traditional way … [with] easy victories, you know, worrying about how many points you’re going to win by, this was a team effort,” Charles said. “We knew we really needed to bear down as a group and be better and I thought the group did it, I thought the leadership did it.”
The Ravens enjoyed a week off before their OUA quarterfinal matchup Saturday at the Raven’s Nest against the Laurier Golden Hawks, who beat the University of Toronto Varsity Blues in the first playoff round.
Featured image by Jayden R. Dill
