Cut the cowbells. Cut the pots, pans and drumsticks. Cut the cheers.
When Aiden Warnholtz steps to the line, it’s silent. The three most important shots of the Carleton Ravens men’s basketball season lie in front of him. The Ravens are up by three points in the final seconds of the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) semifinals with a trip to the national championship on the line.
Dribble. Shoot. Swish. That’s one.
Head coach Taffe Charles paces up and down the Carleton bench.
Dribble. Shoot. Swish. That’s two.
The cheers grow for a minute, then peter out again.
Dribble. Shoot. Swish. That’s three.
With 18.4 seconds left on the clock, the Ravens now lead by six points. They won by seven. After a regular season unlike any other in recent Carleton history, the Ravens booked a trip to the national championship with a 93-86 win over the Queen’s Gaels on Wednesday.
The game was a carbon-copy rematch of the OUA semifinals from a year ago, when Carleton lost 86-80 to Queen’s and missed the OUA final for the first time in 16 years. But after a season of adversity and drama, the Ravens avoided last year’s fate.
“We went through a lot of adversity … and a lot of, I’ll say naysayers, a lot of different things, a lot of how we’re not going to get back there, about all this garbage,” Charles said. “We’re a flawed team like everyone else, but at the end of the day, when it really mattered, we got things done. These guys, I’m super proud of these guys.”
Saddled with a young, inexperienced team, the Ravens lost their most games in a regular season since 1999-00 and lost back-to-back games for only the second time in the last 20 years. But the team has now won nine consecutive games and secured a trip to nationals for the 20th consecutive season.
St. Francis Xavier University will host the national championship at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax from March 10 to 12.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, Carleton’s gonna go to the nationals, Carleton’s gonna go to nationals,’” Charles said. “Getting there that many times in a row, I know we think it’s easy and it’s a joke. It is very difficult … Programs have not even got to this point. For this group of guys to be able to get this done, they should be super proud of themselves.”
The Ravens were locked in a fight with Queen’s early. After taking a 10-4 lead thanks to six points from forward Grant Shephard, the Gaels charged back and made it a one-point game by the end of the quarter.
The back-and-forth continued through the second and third quarters, when Carleton went up by as much as eight points before being brought down to another tie game with 2:16 left in the third.
Queen’s took an 81-78 lead with 2:18 left in the fourth quarter. It was their last lead of the night.
Carleton took advantage of six fouls in the final two minutes and scored 11 points from the free throw line. Charles said Queen’s “self-destructed” in the final minutes.
“A lot of the things that they were doing, a lot of the flopping … came back to haunt them at the end,” he said. “They were just so undisciplined. They got away with it early and at the end of it, when they should’ve been more disciplined, they just got out of the way a little bit. But they’re a good team.”
All told, the lead changed hands 20 times over the course of the game. Grant Shephard put up 22 points and 10 rebounds, while Marjok Okado got 17 points in 18 minutes off the bench.
Warnholtz led the Ravens with 23 points and 11 assists. As one of the most experienced players on the team, he’s one of only a handful who know what it’s like to compete in the OUA finals and nationals.
He said he’s had conversations with first-year guards Okado, Ben Riley and Jacob Knight about how to play in big games.
On Saturday at 8 p.m., the Ravens will play in yet another big game—taking on the uOttawa Gee-Gees in the OUA finals after beating them twice in the regular season.
“We wouldn’t want to lose to them. It doesn’t matter,” Charles said. “We could play anywhere we want to play. It’s not about [the] OUA championship, not about anything about that. We’re competitors. We don’t want to lose to them.”
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
