The Carleton Ravens men’s basketball team continued their perfect regular season by racking up two more wins Nov. 22-23 at home, beating the Wilfrid Laurier University Golden Hawks and the University of Waterloo Warriors.
But even though the team picked up a pair of wins, Ravens guard Victor Raso said the team was not satisfied with their performance in either game.
“To be honest I don’t think we’re playing the best basketball right now,” he said. “We’ve had some ups and downs, but we’re just not defending the way we should be.”
Raso said his team’s defending was better in the games against the Golden Hawks and Warriors than in others thus far in the season.
“We’ve shown we can defend at a very high level, but the last couple weeks, especially the weekend before against McMaster and Brock, we haven’t been defending very well,” he said. “But we keep winning because our offence is never an issue, we seem to score a lot of points no matter how we play on defence.”
The first game against the Golden Hawks saw the Ravens open up a 27-point halftime lead before finishing the game with a 104-68 win.
Ravens forward Tyson Hinz led all scorers with 24 points, while Thomas Scrubb had a double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds.
On the following day, the Ravens got an early lead and stayed the course to beat the Warriors by a 93-58 margin.
Hinz said he was satisfied with his team’s performance in both games, but he echoed Raso’s thoughts on how the team could improve.
“We showed people what we’re capable of, but we still need to improve on the defensive end,” he said. “It’s going to be important for us to play better against really good teams.”
Raso said he knows how important it is for the team to play better in their next game—a clash of the top two ranked teams in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport Nov. 29 when they take on the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees at the Ravens’ Nest.
“We can’t be short-sighted about winning. We have to understand if we aren’t playing our best, even if we’re getting the wins, we need to fix that now to help us down the road,” he said.
Hinz said the Gee-Gees are the biggest test his team will face before the season picks up in January after the holiday break.
“It’s going to be a huge game for us. We treat every game like the next one, but we’re all excited because we know this is biggest test we’ll have so far,” he said.
Last year, the Ravens won all their meetings against the Gee-Gees, but they were some of the closest games the team faced all year.
In their three games against one another last year, the Ravens won by five points at the Capital Hoops Classic, a triple-overtime thriller in the regular season finale, and only three points in the Ontario University Athletics final.
Raso said he expects the Ravens’ Nest to be packed and loud Nov. 29, and said regardless of the result his team has, playing in such a game will only motivate them further going forward.
“If we show up . . . and they beat us, it could only motivate us and let us know that maybe we aren’t as good as we think we are,” he said. “And if we show up, play fantastic, and beat them, it’s only motivation to know that they’re the second-best team in the country, and we’ll probably play them down the road trying to win a national championship.”
