Win or go home time for Vikes hoops teams
It’s basketball, Canadian style, which means February Madness.
The similarity with the NCAA madness of March across the border is that the Canada West opening round of the playoffs is also single-loss elimination.
The seventh-seed University of Victoria women’s team (12-8) will host the 10th-seed Fraser Valley Cascades (10-10) tonight at 7 on Ken and Kathy Shields Court in CARSA gymnasium.
The 10th-seed UVic men’s squad (10-10) is in southern Alberta tonight to play the seventh-seed University of Lethbridge Pronghorns (12-8).
In both playoff sets, the opponent is well known to the Vikes. There are no secrets between the teams in either UVic men’s or women’s games today.
Not only did UVic and Fraser Valley split their regular-season women’s games 1-1, but they also met in last year’s opening playoff round with the Vikes prevailing.
The host Pronghorns swept UVic in their two-game men’s regularseason set. Lethbridge also swept the 2017 first round men’s playoff against UVic, which at that time was a best-of-three format.
“These are familiar foes and the single-game format adds excitement,” said Vikes women’s head coach Dani Sinclair, of the Vikes and Cascades.
“These are provincial rival players who know each other well [through high school, club and provincial teams]. We know Fraser Valley is a physical, tough team that is good in tight games. We can’t let them get secondchance baskets or let them get to the foul line. We have to control the ball and take care of the ball.”
As for the season split, Sinclair said: “In the playoffs, you throw the regular-season results out the window.”
Sinclair agreed playing at home is an advantage in any sport but “not big enough to bank on.”
What the Vikes do hope to bank on is the torrid shooting hand of guard Amira Giannattasio, whose 44 points in the regular-season ending 87-58 victory over the MacEwan Griffins tied her own record for the most points in a game in franchise history.
It was the fourth-highest scoring game in conference history and matched Giannattasio’s 44 points from earlier this season against the UBC Thunderbirds, which eclipsed the former Vikes record of 42 scored by UVic legend and two-time Olympian Carol Turney-Loos in 1978 against the Saskatchewan Huskies.
The only better performances in Canada West history were Calgary Dino Meagan Koch’s 49 points in 1996, Koch’s 45 points in 1995, and former SFU Clan star and two-time Olympian Teresa Kleindienst’s 45 in 2002.
Giannattasio finished her regular-season career No. 3 on the UVic women’s all-time scoring list with 1,539 career points, behind only Turney-Loos (1,646) and former Belmont star Lisa Koop (1,660).
“I could go on for days about what Amira means to our program,” said Sinclair.
“The thing is, she practises as hard as she plays.”
The Vikes men, meanwhile, go back into the Lethbridge gym in which they were blown out only recently in the regular season. But that was an aberration in an otherwise OK second half of the Vikes season led by the play of point-guard Scott Kellum and forward Jake Newman.
“We were 10-4 in the second half of the season, but those two games in Lethbridge stick out in that stretch, because they were the two in which we really did not play well,” said bench boss Beaucamp.
That can’t happen again today against the top-scoring team in Canada West.
“The Pronghorns lead the conference in scoring and are so loose up and down the court,” noted Beaucamp.
“So we have to control the tempo. We have to play defence and be selective on offence and not take quick shots. We have to keep the game close. The longer it stays that way, the better for us.”
Instead of being intimidated by Lethbridge’s home-court advantage in its famously quirky gym, Beaucamp is using it as a motivator: “There are some gyms in Canada West we don’t see for four years. But because of the schedule the past few seasons, and a recent playoff meeting, we are familiar with this gym and feel we know it well.”
The top four men’s and women’s teams received firstround byes in the Canada West post-season, while the other eight playoff teams are each side are participating in single-game elimination rounds this week.
Best-of-three quarter-finals and semifinals will then be played, with the conference playoffs culminating in one-game Canada West championships to be played March 1 or March 2.
The undefeated defending national-champion Calgary Dinos (20-0) are the top men’s seed. The University of Saskatchewan Huskies (16-4), guided by Canadian Olympic team head coach Lisa Thomaidis, are the top women’s seed.