Wisconsin. Baylor. Wichita State. Kansas.
The list of top NCAA men’s basketball programs that have toured north of the border to take on the Carleton Ravens is extensive and impressive. Most of the time, against teams with a multi-million dollar budget, Carleton wins.
The Ravens now look to build on their record of impressive victories for this year’s Can-Am Shootout. Over the next two weeks three division one programs will travel to the Ravens Nest to face off against Carleton, hoping to avoid the fate many others have fallen victim to during the Ravens’ run of 16 national championships in 19 seasons.
The Northeastern Huskies will kick the tour off on Aug. 6, while the Florida State Seminoles come to town on Aug. 8. Carleton will then travel to the Bahamas to play the University of Kentucky on Aug. 13, before returning home for a matchup on Aug. 23 against the Oregon Ducks.
“If you’re going to go to Canada and you really want to challenge yourself, Carleton has to be on the trip,” Oregon assistant coach Mike Mennenga said. “We’re preparing ourselves for the trap.”
For Mennenga and the Ducks, a game against Carleton means facing a team with a “steadfast” tradition of winning.
“We respect what they’ve built there,” Mennenga said. “You don’t have to look too far back to see the teams that went through there and got humbled.”
That includes a 95-82 win over the Wisconsin Badgers in 2013, the summer before the team made it to the NCAA Final Four, and a one-point loss to the Kansas Jayhawks in 2008, just months after Kansas won the national championship.
Carleton has also beat Memphis, Baylor, Texas Tech, Wichita State and Alabama. In 2018, when Duke toured Canada with future NBA star R.J. Barrett on the roster, the school avoided playing Carleton.
“Any person that’s in the business at this level knows the program and knows the success of Carleton—not only in Canada but against American teams,” Mennenga said. “It’s definitely something that’s brought up in conversation, or when those games are happening, the industry is aware.”
As for the Ducks, Mennenga is looking to avoid a similar fate. He said he’s expecting “nothing but a rock fight” and hopes Oregon’s trip to Canada—which also includes games against McGill, Toronto Metropolitan, McMaster and the University of Ottawa—brings out the basketball community.
The goal of this trip, which is Oregon’s first to Canada, is two-fold, according to Mennenga. The first goal is to continue growing the team’s strong ties with Canadian basketball. Many Canadian players have gone through the Ducks’ program, including two current players from Montreal and a red-shirt freshman from Toronto.
Memphis Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks, from Mississauga, and Toronto Raptors forward Chris Boucher, who grew up in Montreal, also played for Oregon.
“It means a lot to us, maybe more so than other programs here in the US,” Mennenga said. “Canada’s been great to us, so we wanted to definitely keep it going.”
The second goal is for the Ducks to become more connected as a group. Oregon is coming off a disappointing season during which it finished fifth in the Pac-12 conference. The school made it to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen in 2021 and 2019, and reached the Final Four in 2017, but tumbling out of the Pac-12 playoffs with a quarterfinal loss in March left a “bad taste in [their] mouth,” Mennenga said.
“We’ve got a good blend of experience and some really nice young talent,” Mennenga said. “If we can get more and more connected—which is probably the true mission of the Canadian trip—we’ll be right there. We’ll be in the fight.”
A win against Carleton would be a bonus.
“If we’re fortunate to come out of there with a win, or if we come out of there and they get us, what a great experience and learning mechanism to motivate our guys either way,” Mennenga said.
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
