HALIFAX — Last year, when the McGill Redbirds walked on to the court at the U Sports men’s basketball national championship in Edmonton, they wore shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “RSEQ vs. The Rest.”
McGill didn’t qualify for this year’s national championship, beginning Friday at the Scotiabank Centre in downtown Halifax, but their motto is still felt by the UQAM Citadins, who will represent the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ). The Citadins will face the Carleton Ravens in the quarterfinals Friday at 11 a.m. ET.
“We’re champs [of RSEQ] and we’re ranked number six [at nationals],” UQAM head coach Mario Joseph told the Charlatan. “Throughout the year, nobody gives us that type of respect.”
With only five teams, RSEQ is the smallest conference in U Sports. Carleton head coach Taffe Charles said the conference is underrated but the Citadins deserve to be here.
“It’s gritty. It’s tough. They have to play each other four times, so within that, they know how to battle,” Charles said. “They’re a good team.”
Carleton faced UQAM in a preseason game in 2021, beating the Montreal school 85-42. Although the Citadins have changed a lot since then, Ravens guard Aiden Warnholtz said he remembers the team being an athletic, physical squad.
And while the Citadins are entering nationals with an underdog mentality, so too is Carleton, Warnholtz said.
“People [were] doubting if we were even gonna get here in the first place,” Warnholtz said, referencing Carleton’s 79-57 loss to the uOttawa Gee-Gees in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) final on March 4. “With the loss last weekend as well, [we have] a little more extra fire to come in and do the dirty work and get the job done.”
Warnholtz is one of only two Ravens, alongside fifth-year guard Grant Shephard, who has experience playing in a national championship in Halifax, where the tournament is being hosted for the 36th time. He played six minutes in the 2019 tournament, while Shephard played 93 minutes that year.
Charles said the team will need a third player besides Warnholtz and Shephard to step up.
“You hope it’s gonna be Wazir [Latiff] or Connor [Vreeken],” he explained. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who the third person is, but we’re probably gonna need one.”
While RSEQ may be underrated by others, Carleton’s division—the OUA East—is seen as the toughest division in Canada by Queen’s Gaels head coach Steph Barrie.
Carleton, Queen’s and uOttawa will be representing that division this weekend, making up almost half of the eight teams at nationals. The Gaels snuck into nationals as the at-large berth.
“We’re the one team here that didn’t win their way in,” Barrie said. “We’re aware of that. We’re getting a second opportunity that we feel very fortunate to get and our plan is to try to make the most of it.”
The tournament begins Friday at 11 a.m. ET, when Carleton faces UQAM in the quarterfinals.
Featured image by L. Manuel Baechlin.
