Mirred in mediocrity
MUN Sea-Hawks men’s basketball program not realizing its current potential
No pressure, but the Memorial Sea-Hawks men’s basketball team has to make the playoffs this season.
This is the best, deepest squad — by Memorial standards, anyway — the Sea-Hawks have put on the men’s court in a while, so there are no excuses.
But the Sea-Hawks have their work cut out for them, with a pair of home games this weekend against the 10-4 Dalhousie Tigers, who share first place with UPEI. Memorial, on the other hand, is tied with Saint Mary’s for the sixth and final playoff berth, sputtering along in the second half at 2-4, losers of two straight last weekend to UNB.
Entering today’s games, they’ve surrendered more points than any other team in the conference this season.
Next weekend, the Sea-Hawks are in P.E.I. to play the Panthers, before clewing up the regular season the following weekend against St. FX, the only team trailing Memorial.
Agreed, MUN made the playoffs last year, but the Sea-Hawks were 6-14 and naturally lost their quarter-final game.
The last time the Sea-Hawks were provided any semblance of being a contender in the Atlantic universities conference was the late 1990s under Glenn Taylor. Memorial hasn’t had a record above .500 since 2001-02 and since then, the Sea-Hawks were a combined 41-218 heading into this season, with a total of four playoff appearances in 15 years.
And not one Atlantic intercollegiate men’s basketball championship banner in the university’s history, the only AUS school to hold that distinction.
Talent is there this season. Vasilije Curcic and Caleb Gould are as good as any one-two punch in the league. First-year Sea-Hawk Daniel Gordon has been a real nice find, and Davion Parnsalu is doing the job in the backcourt. There’s actually a bit of depth on the roster.
But MUN is reaching a crossroads. Gould and Noel Moffatt are done after this year. Curcic is entering his final season.
Bottom line is Memorial needs to start developing some kind of winning culture. How is the big question, and whether that comes under Peter Benoite, I’m not sure, but a decision will have to made after this season.
Doug Partridge was canned last season, and he was winning. This losing cannot continue. It’s time for Memorial to figure out if it’s an AUS school or not. Because as it stands, the Sea-Hawks have been nothing but bystanders, a glorified intramural program if you consider results, and results only.
Corner Brook’s 6-5 guard, Nathan Barker, is the best to come along in a while from this province and MUN would love to have him when he finishes high school in the spring.
Memorial has its advantages — solid university, nice facility, decent support. But until the program starts to matter, starts to win games on a quasi-consistent basis, until the university actually displays the slightest of signs that it cares and values varsity sports, until locker rooms for the men’s and women’s teams are engineered, until varsity teams have preferred practice times in the Field House, it’s not likely Barker nor many other top recruits will want to become a Sea-Hawk. Why would they? At the end of the day, it’s about wins and losses, and all this losing has gotten very old.