It may have been a new Carleton Ravens men’s basketball team taking the court for the 2014 edition of the Can-Am Shootout against elite National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) competition, but the Ravens once again held their own against their American opponents, finishing the exhibition series with a 4-1 record.
Carleton’s final game ended with a dominant display in a 92-60 shellacking of the Memphis Tigers, a perennial NCAA tournament team, on Aug. 19.
“I thought we defended well. I’m pretty happy with the way we played,” Ravens coach Dave Smart said.
Finishing the five-game stint against American teams with four wins means the Ravens fared slightly better than the 2013 summer NCAA slate, where they had a 3-1 record.
After dropping its first game by 10 points to the Indiana Hoosiers on Aug. 11—without Smart or star guard Philip Scrubb—Carleton won its final four games with wins over the University of Vermont, University of Illinois at Chicago, followed by a pair of victories over Memphis.
Scrubb had an immediate impact in his return to the Ravens lineup after missing the first few games due to playing in Europe with the Canadian senior men’s national team.
He nearly put up a triple-double in the first game against Memphis with 35 points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists, before following that up by torching the Tigers’ defence with 30 more points in the finale.
Scrubb said it was important for the Ravens to play against these NCAA teams before the regular season kicks off.
“It’s good for us—as a team we’re young,” he said. “It exposes what we need to work on, some things we do pretty well, and we can only get better from here.”
Carleton’s other Scrubb, Thomas, Philip’s brother, was no scrub on the court either, as the reigning Canadian defensive player of the year played a pivotal role in getting rebounds and covering the opposing team’s top shooters.
Thomas said the games were great both for him and the team because it will take time for them to adjust defensively after losing Tyson Hinz and Kevin Churchill to graduation.
“We lost two of our post players from last year so we are a pretty small team, so we get in games like and we need to step up our physical game to compete with them,” Thomas said. “It will take a whole team effort to rebound this year, not just one person or a few guys.”
Carleton will resume its exhibition when it hosts the annual House-Laughton Tournament against fellow Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) teams from Oct. 17-19.
The team’s regular season is set to begin on Nov. 7 at home against the Brock Badgers at the Ravens’ Nest.
But before that, they will face likely their toughest test before the season gets underway in a final exhibition game, as they will travel to the Carrier Dome in Syracuse to face the highly-touted Syracuse Orange, who handed Carleton its only loss in the 2013 Can-Am Shootout in a 69-65 overtime thriller.
Despite being smaller on the defensive end of the floor, Smart said he sees a lot of promise in this year’s Ravens team, which is aiming to win its fifth straight national championship, and its 11th in the past 13 seasons.
“We’re a lot better than I thought we were going to be,” he said. “We’re a little quicker defensively than we have been in the past. We still have to find ways to score offensively.”
