One inch. One finger. One millisecond more.
One point.
That’s what 18 games, 720 minutes and six months came down to. One inch to the left or right and the ball goes in. One inch and everything changes.
The final seconds of the U Sports men’s basketball national championship semifinal were a blur. A crowd of players, huddled under the net, watching to see how their season would end. The Carleton Ravens needed a miss. The University of Alberta Golden Bears needed a bucket.
The Ravens got their way. It seems they always do. They’ve won nine of the last 10 national championships and will have a shot at one more on Sunday in the Canadian championship.
The 64-63 win—a collision of the top two teams in the nation in the game of the year—sends Carleton to the most important game on the university basketball calendar and sends Alberta packing after an undefeated 16-0 season.
The final moment, with Alberta’s frenzied shot bouncing off the rim, down, and back up, only to hit the rim again, was the decisive blow. But Golden Bears guard Tyus Jefferson—Canada West Player of the Year—also had two free throws with 13 seconds left on the clock.
One bucket would’ve tied the game. Two would’ve given Alberta the lead. Jefferson missed both.
For Alberta to be in that position was a battle in itself. The Golden Bears were down 17 points in the opening minutes of the second quarter—a deficit that normally means defeat against the Ravens. Instead, Alberta put together an 18-1 run and tied the game 27-27 just minutes later.
This pattern repeated itself. Carleton was up by 11 one minute into the third quarter; Alberta closed the gap to four by the time the fourth frame rolled around. Then Carleton went up by 10—only to be brought back down again for the final moments of an unbelievable game.
“We’re all gutted,” Alberta head coach Barnaby Craddock said. “It’s one of those ones we’ll be thinking about the rest of our lives.”
The feeling is familiar for the Ravens. At Capital Hoops in 2020, Carleton had four shots in the final seven seconds—none of which went in. They lost that game 68-67, the only loss in an otherwise perfect 2020 championship run.
Forward Lloyd Pandi, a rookie in 2020, was on the bench for that moment after being injured at the start of the game.
“It sucks. You saw those guys—how they were heartbroken because they left it all on the floor,” said Pandi, who scored 14 points with 14 rebounds on Saturday. “That ball bouncing controlled everyone’s emotions in this whole entire gym, but we’re lucky that it went in our favour.”
In the final at 8 p.m. ET Sunday, Carleton will face the University of Saskatchewan Huskies, the eighth-seeded underdogs whose head coach resigned just three weeks ago. Saskatchewan hasn’t won a national championship since 2010; the Ravens are going for their eighth this decade.
If the ball had bounced differently, the Ravens wouldn’t have the chance.
“I don’t want to think about that,” Pandi said. “All I want to think about is that we’re playing for a national championship.”
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
