The top spot in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) men’s basketball east division is wide open. Between the 14-2 Queen’s Gaels, 14-3 uOttawa Gee-Gees and 13-4 Carleton Ravens, the final three weeks of the regular season will be a mad dash to the finish line.
That’s part of what makes Friday’s Capital Hoops matchup between the Ravens and Gee-Gees—the first Capital Hoops at TD Place since the pandemic began—so exciting. Combined with Carleton’s recent struggles and uOttawa’s brief appearance as the top-ranked team in Canada, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Friday night.
“The competition is wide open,” Gee-Gees head coach James Derouin said Sunday. “In terms of having an opportunity to win [a national championship] versus the competition that’s in the league this year, I think it’s as good a chance as I’ve had and these guys know that.”
Derouin said his team is coming off a disappointing 76-62 loss to Queen’s on Sunday, where uOttawa was “caught off guard.” He pointed to the team’s lack of consistency shooting three-pointers.
In their games on Jan. 20 and 21 against the Toronto Metropolitan University Bold and the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, the Gee-Gees shot 45 per cent or better from three. Then, this past weekend, the Gee-Gees shot just 23.7 and 20 per cent, their two worst three-point shooting games of the season.
“The variance on this team shooting the ball is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Derouin said. “It’s something we need to fix, whether it’s mental or execution.”
The Gee-Gees key players are forward Guillaume Pépin and guard Cole Newton, the only two players on the team averaging more than 10 points a game (minimum 10 games played). But both players were on their heels in Sunday’s game, Derouin said.
“Those guys are leaders and leaders can’t come into games like that and look unprepared,” he said. “If they do, it filters down.”
While uOttawa stumbled in its first weekend as the top team in the nation since January 2016, the Ravens found new life as the third-ranked team.
After struggling through the first six games of 2023, guard Aiden Warnholtz put up a combined 64 points last weekend as Carleton cruised to comfortable wins over Queen’s and the Ontario Tech Ridgebacks.
Warnholtz said the weekend was a positive progression for the team after losing back-to-back games for only the second time in the last 20 years on Jan. 20 and 21.
“Everybody was playing together, the bench was into it, guys on the court were talking, kind of wanting to do it for each other,” Warnholtz said. “Obviously there’s always room to improve, but I think definitely it was steps in the right direction.”
Warnholtz is one of only three players on Carleton’s roster with Capital Hoops experience after playing two minutes in the 2019 game and 10 minutes at the 2020 game, when the Ravens lost by one point. He said a big focus of the team’s preparation is minimizing distractions.
“With all the extra stuff that does go on with it, [we] got to make sure we’re thinking about each other more and not getting distracted with all the extra stuff,” he said. “[We have] to enjoy the process, but also remember we’ve got a job to do and it’s really about our team rather than all the extra stuff.”
While Warnholtz said the Ravens are trying not to treat Capital Hoops as any more important than other regular season games, Derouin said this game is different than others—especially with the feeling that the path to a national championship is wide open.
“Queen’s is feeling the same way, Carleton is feeling the same way, [the University of Victoria] is feeling the same way, Brock [and] Lakehead are feeling the same way,” Derouin explained. “Everybody feels like they could win a championship or they could be out in the first round.”
In the OUA playoffs, the top team in each of the three divisions receives a first-round bye, jumping straight to the quarterfinals. The remaining teams are seeded based on record, with the top non-division winner also receiving a bye.
After Capital Hoops, the Gee-Gees will face Queen’s again on Feb. 5. It’s a two-game stretch that could determine if uOttawa gets to skip the first round of the playoffs—and, in turn, how easy its path to the national championship will be.
“There’s a lot at stake here the next two games, that’s for sure,” Derouin said.
Featured image by Tayssir Benchoubane.
