Here's some questions about the Mitchell Bowl national semi-final, featuring the Saskatchewan Huskies against the Ottawa Gee-Gees (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, The Score/RDS). - How much does it affect the Huskies if running back Scott Stevens
can't go on Saturday due to his injured ankle?
Huskies coach Brian Towriss would never admit -- at least not to anyone recording his thoughts for posterity -- but deep-down he might wish he hadn't had to suspend Luke Derkson for disciplinary reasons earlier this season. Or maybe not, since the U of S is always deep in running backs. Tyler O'Gorman is a good back, and Jordan Koroll will fill in for Stevens.
Of far greater concern to the Huskies on the injury front is having three O-linemen who are nicked up -- Michael Loos, Jamie Sommerfeld and Tyler West. Towriss told the Star-Phoenix the status of all three is unknown. - Saskatchewan has a rep for being a physical team. A) Has Ottawa seen anything like it and B) Can they handle it?
No, they haven't, but yes they probably are capable of doing so. Laurier showed last year that a smaller, quick team from Ontario can stand up to the U of S. Ottawa's veteran offensive line of Mike DeGagné, Naim El-Far, Kevin Kelly, Kyle Kirkwood and Frank Spera must set a tone early. - How well are the Gee-Gees prepared to defend Saskatchewan's scrambling quarterback, Bret Thompson?
Similar to Question 2. Save for when they go against Josh Sacobie in practice, Ottawa hasn't seen a good team with a quarterback who can move around like Thompson, who had 343 yards total offence in the Can West final last week against Manitoba. Still, Ottawa is very fast defensively and has tailored their system to the FieldTurf at Frank Clair Stadium, and that may bode well against a more static Saskatchewan offence. (It could be a coincidence, but the U of S has lost only four games over the past three years, and all but one of those came on an artificial surface.)
Assistant head coach Danny Laramee, who oversees the defence, and veterans like linebacker Joe Barnes have to make sure they don't get overly aggressive, which was Manitoba's downfall last week. - Speaking of Sacobie, what's not to like about Ottawa's main man?
This is a small nit to pick, but Sacobie has what baseball coaches call a "live arm" -- sometimes he's s a bit prone to overthrowing open receivers. Against Queen's in the OUA semi-final he threw a ball several feet over an open receiver's head, leading to a gift interception. (Then again, it could have been the receiver's fault.)
Ottawa would be better off to try and throw some intermediate routes early and see how well Saskatchewan's linebackers and deep backs can run with receivers such as J.P. Asselin, David Crane, Wayne Desmond and Adam Nicolson. - Do people overrate Saskatchewan's big-game experience?
Probably, but they can probably handle bad breaks early in the game better than the Gee-Gees can. Still, Ottawa will be in its own space, where they've already played six games this season. - Saskatchewan always seems to find someone deep on the depth chart who emerges late in the season. Who is it this year?
Have to go with Cory Jones, the receiver who wasn't cleared to play until well into the season due to knee problems, but made 54- and 72-yard catches against Manitoba. - What kind of crowd is Ottawa going to get for its first home bowl game since 1997?
Worth noting that the top ticket price for Saturday is $10 -- $5 lower than for the Yates Cup last week. The U of O is also offering students, staff, clubs and faculty association 2-for-1 tickets in an effort to get them out. No, Laurier, Western or Saint Mary's wouldn't have to offer 2-for-1 tickets for a national semi-final, but hey, the bottom line is Ottawa will get a good crowd by their standards. Call it a made-in-Ottawa solution to the Gee-Gees' stadium quandary. (John Bower, the Gee-Gees public affairs co-ordinator, points out the school has to pay the CIS a hosting fee, but keeps to the whole gate, unlike in the OUA playoffs.)
The problem for the Gee-Gees starts with location, location, location -- Frank Clair is way too far off-campus, and it's way too big for university football. It's one of the strangest things to an out-of-towner who follows another team to come in and see such a small crowd for a good team. It's just another instance of a bad facility that discourages people from coming out and therefore reinforces the stereotype that Ottawa is a bad sports town. - Well, what's your prediction on the game?
This author's going to take Ottawa, since I have to live in the nation's capital for a couple weeks yet. They can pull it off if Sacobie is on target and they take the big play away from the U of S in all three phases. Ottawa 23, Saskatchewan 20 -- just like the '76 Grey Cup.
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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2 comments:
So you are leaving town Neate. Did you land a sport writer gig somewhere?
The Mitchell tickets are marked with a face value of $20, yet they are being sold for $10. A last minute change to entice more people? I thought the CIS had input into the Bowl game prices. The CIS does get a cut of the gate.
I love watching games at Frank Clair Stadium. I think the atmosphere would be fine if they could get 6000+ peeps out for every game. They have fallen far short of this, and one of these days it will be a moot point; as the university wants to build a campus stadium. It will probably be situated where the Sandy Hill Arena presently stands.
U of O has also been offered the mothballed Lees Avenue campus of Algonquin College, to do as they wish with it, for the princely sum of one dollar. The catch is that the soil is contaminated with something, and it would take millions to do an enviromental clean-up should they try to build on it.
Hi there Neate!
Thanks for the comments on our football program. The tickets were priced originally at $20 for adults when I was under the impression that we had to revenue share like in the OUA playoffs.
However, when I found out that we pay the CIS a $15,000 hosting fee, and we keep the gate, I discussed with several stakeholders, including the football program about offering $10 tickets for students and adults, and 2-for-1 to intice students and staff to make the drive down from campus.
As such, you are right, that in a venue on campus around 7000 seats, we wouldn't ever entertain this idea, but the fact is that with SSK, there isn't a huge fans base in this market for us to draw from and therefore, we made the call to drop the ticket prices in this round - again, mainly because of the lack of revenue sharing and secondly to get a great crowd!
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