Vikes to stand tall at Vetrie tourney
Coach Craig Beaucamp went to some pretty esoteric places to build his front wall for the coming Canada West men’s basketball season.
Fans will get their first glimpse of the revamped forward corps during the annual Guy Vetrie Memorial Tournament beginning tonight with the Vikes meeting Saskatchewan Huskies at 8 p.m. at CARSA Performance Gym after the Manitoba Bisons and Ryerson Rams tip off the tournament at 6 p.m.
Consider six-foot-nine Rohtash Mattu is from Punjab in India, via Edmonds Community College in Washington state, sixfoot-six Carlos Costa from Sao Paulo, Brazil, via Butte College in California, and six-foot-eight Jesse Barnes from Haida Gwaii via Otero Junior College in Colorado.
“We were only an average rebounding team last season and we need to be better than that,” Beaucamp said. “We wanted to get bigger, so we added some height to our front line.”
And added some international sizzle to go with it. Each U Sports team is allowed three imports, but the Vikes have rarely filled that quota. This season they will, with Mattu and Costa joining returning point-guard Scott Kellum from Issaquah, Washington.
That has resulted in roster changes for the Vikes, despite having no graduating fifth-year players last season.
But this is still a team with which fans will be familiar, with the return of Kellum, Jaden Touchie, Tayor Montgomery Stinson, Graeme Hyde-Lay, Jake Newman, Jason Scully, Jordan Charles, Hayden Lejeune and Mason Loewen.
It will be a hobbled host team, however, this weekend.
“We got nicked up in training with groins and ankles, and have four guys who are day-to-day,” Beaucamp said.
“It’s not ideal heading into our own tournament, but in the overall scheme, it’s early. Better now than later on.”
The Vetrie Tournament, named after the late national championship-winning Vikes coach Guy Vetrie, continues with games on Friday. The Rams and Huskies will start at 4 p.m. and the Vikes and Bisons at 6 p.m. The tournament concludes Saturday with Manitoba meeting Saskatchewan at 5 p.m. and UVic playing Ryerson at 7 p.m.
Because of Canada West’s unbalanced schedule, the Vikes will player neither Saskatchewan nor Manitoba in the regular season, which is why Beaucamp invited them to play in the Vetrie tournament. Ryerson, meanwhile, has become an Ontario powerhouse and made it to the U Sports national championship game last season.
The UVic women’s basketball team also begins its exhibition schedule with games against the University of Northern British Columbia Timberwolves on Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. in CARSA Gym. This will be the final season for fifth-year UVic standouts Amira Giannattasio and Kristy Gallagher.