This is the uOttawa Gee-Gees’ house of horrors—the place where basketball dreams go to die. Day after day, year after year, there’s no winning for uOttawa at the Ravens’ Nest.
Until Saturday. Until the Carleton Ravens men’s basketball team crumbled under the lights of the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) final, where the Gee-Gees’ insurmountable pressure saw the Ravens crack.
Until Dragan Stajic made a stilted three-pointer from the top of the arc and walked down the gym, over the black Ravens crest at centre court and raised his arms to the crowd to celebrate Ottawa’s 19-point lead.
When the final buzzer rang, uOttawa’s improbable show of force against the 16-time national champions was complete. This is no longer a house of horrors for the Gee-Gees. Their fans filled the bleachers, chanting “our house.” The Gee-Gees were Wilson Cup champions with a 79-57 win.
It was a game not about survival, but something more important—pride. Both teams had already clinched a berth at the U Sports national championship in Halifax from March 10 to 12, becoming two of eight teams from across the country set to fight for the most prized possession in Canadian university basketball.
But only the Ravens had succeeded in the crosstown rivalry this season. Carleton won both regular season games against uOttawa, first with a six-point win at Capital Hoops, then a 16-point win to clinch the OUA East.
The Gee-Gees did not want to lose again. Instead, they defeated Carleton by their largest margin since Feb. 28, 1999.
Now, they’ll ride a wave of momentum into their second nationals appearance in the last six seasons.
“There’s a lot of emotions that go into these games—for our fans, for our alumni, for the kids on the team,” uOttawa head coach James Derouin said. “This isn’t just a regular win or a Wilson Cup championship. It’s got a lot more to it than that for everyone involved with our program.”
The Ravens and Gee-Gees began the game even-handed, exchanging leads in an environment that made the first possession seem like the last. Helped along by three-pointer after three-pointer, the Gee-Gees scored 11 consecutive points and led the Ravens by 10 halfway through the second quarter.
While uOttawa led 35-29 at halftime, it wasn’t thanks to star forward Guillaume Pépin, who made only one field goal in the first half. That sparked Derouin to give Pépin an “adults-only” speech.
Derouin reminded Pépin of his success in a preseason game against the Oregon Ducks, when he scored only two points in the first half before an 18-point second half. He also underlined the plan for Pépin entering the game and how he wasn’t following it.
The speech worked. In the fourth quarter alone, Pépin sank all nine shots he attempted—including four three-pointers—and scored 14 points.
But it was the third quarter where the Ravens collapsed. Through the constant barrage of aggressive defence, the Gee-Gees’ lead swelled to 19 points with two minutes left in the quarter.
“[I] told these guys, you gotta take it like a man. You know what, sometimes you get beat up. You get beat up like a man,” Carleton head coach Taffe Charles said. “Look them in the eyes and be happy for them … Let them celebrate on our floor. Awesome. Let’s do all that stuff. Because we’ve been on the other side, so we gotta remind ourselves of how hard it is.”
There are bigger games ahead for the Ravens. Charles said it “would’ve been nice” to win the OUA championship, but all eyes are now on winning a 17th national championship next weekend in Halifax.
Losing now could be a blessing.
“We weren’t close. We got beat up,” Charles said. “For us, it’s perfect … There’s another level we need to get to. They showed us that we weren’t at that level.”
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Far from the lights, the Ravens still had to endure the reminders of their loss, the cheers from the Gee-Gees’ locker room echoing down the hallway to Carleton star Aiden Warnholtz as he met with the media after the game.
“If we’re going to play like that again, then we’re not going to have our ultimate goal of winning a national championship,” Warnholtz said.
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
