In the build-up to this weekend’s Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) men’s basketball championship, McGill Redmen head coach David DeAveiro said his team wanted to earn the rest of the country’s respect.
They wanted to prove the Quebec conference belongs on the national stage.
They wanted to win — and that, unfortunately for the Quebec league champions, is where things didn’t go quite as planned.
In the end, the third-seeded University of Ottawa Gee-Gees prevailed with an 82-70 victory over the Redmen in the second of four quarter-finals Friday afternoon at Scotiabank Place.
“If you come here and go 0-2 it’s going to be the same old story, the same old song, Quebec doesn’t deserve to be here because we don’t win,” a visibly disappointed DeAveiro said after the game.
“Nobody really remembers whether it was a one-point game or two-point game, they remember who wins,” he said.
As unfair as it may be, he’s right. They will remember the Gee-Gees, the team DeAveiro spent 19 years with as a player and coach before making the move to McGill.
James Derouin, DeAveiro’s successor at the University of Ottawa, said it was bittersweet to eliminate his colleague, mentor, and friend from contention in McGill’s first appearance at the CIS Final 8 tournament since 1979.
“Unfortunately we ran to each other in the first round, so somebody’s got to lose,” Derouin said. “He’s a believer in us and our program and he thinks we’ve got a shot.”
He’d be crazy not to.
If there was ever any doubt, the Gee-Gees present the biggest threat to the top-ranked Carleton Ravens this weekend. That became even more true earlier in the day when the second-seeded Cape Breton Capers were upset by the Ontario University Athletics bronze medalists from Lakehead University — the team Ottawa will meet in Saturday night’s semi-final.
For fifth-year guard Warren Ward, who recorded a game-high 23 points and 11 rebounds Friday against his former head coach, there’s likely no other team he’d rather beat.
“It’s just a storybook ending for me. I don’t know man . . . to play the team that beat us at the buzzer my third year and then beat us in our own gym my second year, it’s going to be special.”
Meanwhile, the hopes of an all-Ottawa final are still alive.
