It wasn’t the storybook ending he was hoping for, but Mehdi Tihani says he has no regrets about leaving the Carleton Ravens — or about joining their arch-rivals from the University of Ottawa.
With their 84-69 win over the Acadia Axemen Saturday night at Scotiabank Place, the Ravens are set to compete for yet another Canadian Interuniversity (CIS) men’s basketball championship.
Tihani’s Gee-Gees, on the other hand, will have to wait at least another year after suffering a heartbreaking 66-62 defeat to the underdog Lakehead University Thunderwolves in the first semifinal of the night.
Although he’ll be watching as his former club looks to make CIS history on Sunday, Tihani is right where he wants to be.
“I’m proud of our team,” Tihani said after the loss. “I wouldn’t change anything.”
Though he’s a proud Gee-Gee now, Tihani’s road to the University of Ottawa wasn’t by any means an ordinary one.
He committed to Carleton in 2010 after spending time with the provincial champion Ottawa Guardsmen. Ravens head coach Dave Smart is the president and co-founder of the Guardsmen club, which is often viewed as Carleton’s unofficial “feeder” system.
In his first year with the Ravens, Tihani was a “redshirt” freshman. In other words, he didn’t actually play in any games.
This isn’t an unusual occurrence for first-year players on an always-deep Ravens roster, but Tihani didn’t believe there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
“Me and Dave [Smart] mutually agreed that I wasn’t going to ever get playing time at Carleton,” Tihani said earlier in the week. “So I left and looked for another school to play for.”
At Carleton, Tihani was simply a victim of the numbers game. With fifth-year guards Elliot Thompson, Cole Hobin, and Willy Manigat returning, Smart said Tihani likely wouldn’t have seen the court again last season had he chosen to stay.
There’s also the fact that Philip Scrubb, now a two-time CIS player of the year, happens to play the same position.
“When Mehdi came, we fell into Phil,” Smart said. “You fall into a guy who plays 35 minutes a game. I love Mehdi, I think he’s a great player, but I’d still take Phil.”
Tihani said leaving the Ravens for their bitter cross-town rivals wasn’t an easy decision. Initially, it wasn’t even a consideration ¬— let alone a realistic possibility.
“He wouldn’t even dream of it,” said Gee-Gees head coach James Derouin. “It’s crazy, but that’s how strong the rivalry can be at times.”
Tihani’s initial plan was to transfer to the University of Ottawa to simply improve his grades. He would then continue his CIS career with the Queen’s University Gaels the following year.
But things fell through with Queen’s around the same time Ottawa lost their backup point guard, which opened some doors in the eyes of both Tihani and Derouin.
Despite being pressured by the likes of Vikas Gill, Johnny Berhanemeskel and Mike L’Africain—who Tihani had become good friends with—the Gee-Gees head coach still wasn’t convinced.
“I wasn’t really keen on it because I didn’t feel like he had left Carleton yet. I didn’t feel he had reached that point,” said Derouin, who remains unsure whether Tihani left Carleton willingly or was let go.
“Over the course of the summer, he trained really hard and we had one last meeting at the start of the season. I said, ‘Are you here now?’ He said he was.”
And he wasn’t kidding.
The 6’2”, 190 lbs. point guard averaged 6.6 points per game with the Gee-Gees this season and was named to the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) East division all-rookie team.
In Ottawa’s CIS Final 8 tournament opener, he played 23 minutes, had 12 points and was on the court protecting a lead in the dying stages of the game.
These sorts of performances don’t surprise his new head coach anymore — though he admits they did at first.
“He’s been fantastic for us,” Derouin said. “I think the biggest element that he adds to us is probably just his level of toughness out there, something that probably developed with Carleton and with the Guardsmen program before that.”
Tihani isn’t the first Ravens transfer to enjoy success after moving on from the program.
There’s Anthony Ashe, who has been a force for the Acadia University Axemen the last few years, and more recently Greg Faulkner, who averaged 19.9 points per game with the Queen’s Gaels this season.
“You look at guys like [Ashe, Faulkner, or Tihani], if they were still here, they’d be starting — or close to starting,” Smart said. “It’s just the way things go.”
“He’s an unbelievable talent and I’m thrilled that he’s doing well,” Smart continued. “I talk to my team about him all the time, just in terms of how far he’s come. He’s an example of what determination can do for you.”
Although Tihani remains friends with a few of his former Ravens teammates, he said he doesn’t talk to them nearly as much as he would have anticipated.
He suspects a few of them still hold grudges.
“A few players will probably never talk to me because of the decision I made,” he said. “It’s okay, I have no regrets.”
