The Ravens are again the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) men’s basketball champions, but get ready for the doomsday predictions.

Three Ravens are graduating and they’re big pieces of the championship puzzle.

Rob Saunders, Aaron Doornekamp and Stu Turnbull, known to some as the Kingston trio, have all played their last game as Ravens, and it was a great one.

“It really does mean everything,” Turnbull said after the the championship victory. “This is what I spend my life on right now, this is what I feel passion for and when you achieve your goals, it’s everything.”

These three have won four championships in their five years at Carleton, and now people are bound to ask what the program will be able to do without them. But the question is one Dave Smart, Carleton’s head coach, has faced before.

When standout Osvaldo Jeanty graduated in 2007, questions were raised about the program’s viability without him.

“They went through a lot last year,” said Smart on the floor of Scotiabank Place after winning his sixth championship in seven years. “A lot of people were asking if they could win it without Oz and I think that those comments are unfair. I think Oz would say that they were unfair, although he did call three or four times this week to say that we had better get it done this year.”

Jeanty, who has followed the team during the season, said he thinks Carleton will be fine without the Kingston Trio.

“I laugh because every single year, there are at least two guys who graduate and people say, ‘Oh Carleton is finished because these guys are leaving, or these guys are leaving’,” he said in a phone interview from Germany where he is playing professional ball. “People don’t realize that the two or three other guys don’t put up big numbers because Dave establishes roles for every guy on the team. It doesn’t mean that they’re not capable of doing it.”

Jeanty said Smart cycles players through a series of roles during their time with the Ravens, and when players leave, younger players step up and fill their role.

“When Jafeth [Maseruka] and Robbie [Smart] graduated, people said that Carleton wouldn’t be the same, but all it was was that Paul and Josh just got a bigger role and had more shots. They graduated and so Dave put the offence around me and Mike [Smart] a lot more. Then Mike graduated so Dave put it around me and Aaron [Doornekamp].

Now it’s Aaron and Stu. Next year when Stu and Aaron are gone Kevin [McCleery] and Mike [Kenny] will have to step up a bit more. It is always going to be a ladder. Dave [Smart] is creating stars each year.”

Smart said each of the three graduating players has added something to the team this year, and their championship run.

“Rob [Saunders] wanted to go out swinging and he did. He really set the tone when he blocked the shot [on Chris Dyck] at the start of the second half,” Smart said – referring to the University of British Columbia star who scored 17 points in the first half of the final game and only four in the second, thanks in large part to Saunder’s defence.

Aaron Doornekamp has stood out for the team all season and is poised to make a run at the professional leagues but had a relatively quiet game with 11 points and eight rebounds.

According to Smart, Doornekamp’s value extends past his own stats.

“He just changes the game. The other team’s focus is on him and so he makes his teammates better. People don’t understand that when [Doornekamp] goes off the floor we struggle to score because the other team can focus on our main guys but when he’s on the floor all of our other guys are so much more effective because the other team doesn’t want Aaron to go off on them,” he said.

“[Turnbull] just gets it done,” Smart said of the tournament MVP, who made a game-winning play with five seconds left in the semi-final game.

“To me it’s just a case of character. How do you miss two foul shots and then turn around with four seconds to go and knock down a fade away at the buzzer from 12 feet? How many people have enough character to do that? It’s not a credit to his ability as much as it is a credit to his character,” he said.

Now the Kingston Trio will be hanging up their Carleton jerseys after using up their five years of eligibility. But they do so in Carleton’s tried-and-true style: winning.