Contact Dave Smart these days and the Carleton Ravens men’s basketball coach might BlackBerry back, "Right now it is a little insane around here. I think people forget we have two games this weekend that I'm concerned with."Smart's counterpart with the rival Ottawa Gee-Gees, Dave DeAveiro, accepts fielding inquiries about tickets -- do you think Dean Smith ever had to deal with that? -- as part "the hype, all the commotion" over Tuesday's inaugural MNBA Capital Hoops Classic at Scotiabank Place, which has seen students and hoops fans scoop up 8,000 tickets. (UPDATE: As of Saturday, Jan. 20, the tally was 8,700.)
Like Smart, he says it has been tough to keep his players' focus on this weekend’s games against RMC and a very good Queen’s team.
"You’re getting like a hundred calls a day," DeAveiro says. "The interest among both student bodies and in the basketball community is really taking off.
"I think part of that is all the close games we always seem to have with Carleton. In the last four, five years most of our games have been decided by less than five points."The schools and Capital Sports, which is teaming up with Carleton to host the CIS Final 8 national championship at Scotiabank from 2008 through 2010, originally aimed at selling 5,000 tickets. Aside from the cross-town rivalry and the team's national rankings – four-time CIS champion Carleton is No. 1 and unbeaten in conference play while Ottawa comes in at No. 7 -- why has the event been able to surpass the original target?
"I think people have just got caught up in the hype and I also think that Capital Sports does a very good job with the marketing of these types of event," Smart says. "Really there are probably 1,500 people who care about the game. Most of the rest just want to be part of the event and are interested in basketball, not the two teams. Whatever the case it should help basketball in the community."
Selling the sizzle doesn't hurt. Halifax's legion of volunteers have done a great job hosting the national university men's basketball championship since 1984, but one phenomena they've been unable to control is that attendance drops from the Friday quarter-finals to the final if the Atlantic conference teams are knocked out early. Smart points out that the ticket sales for Tuesday indicate there's a central Canada city that can also get a crowd out for CIS basketball.
"I think it helps in the perception we are going to have a great crowd at nationals," he says. "I think it will be a very different group at nationals, but probably similar numbers. I feel with half the teams at Nationals being within four or five hours of Ottawa, that the crowds are going to be very good.
Smart adds, "The fact that for the semifinal and final games there could be four and then two teams playing which are within easy driving distance is going to really help the draw. (During Carleton's run) very few people in Ottawa have waited to see if we get to the semis and then jumped in a car to head to Halifax. Next year, 21 (CIS) schools have people who will likely do that."
KINGSTON CONNECTION!
As a sidebar to Tuesday's game, it's the first time a pair of graduates from Ernestown Secondary School west of Kingston, Carleton all-Canadian forward Aaron Doornekamp (top photo) and U of O guard Donnie Gibson (bottom photo), will be on the court together as university opponents.
Gibson, 20, saw only spot action last season as a freshman and didn’t always get into close games. This season, in DeAveiro’s words, he’s "given us a spark," averaging 4.6 points in 17.8 minutes per game. Last weekend, he had 11 points in a tight 73-68 road win over the Laurentian Voyageurs.
"He’s good kid, very quiet," DeAveiro says of Gibson. “His nickname right now is the 'Silent Assassin.' He goes out there and plays hard and does his job and you don’t even notice him until you look at the scoresheet.
"The great thing with Donnie that the best is yet to come. He's only going to get better."
The 6-foot-3, 190-lb. Gibson says being a grade behind Doornekamp at Ernestown helped him get ready for CIS hoops. Doornekamp is the youngest of the seven relatives -- Smart's nieces and nephews -- who helped transform the Eagles into a provincial power in AA basketball before moving on to play collegiate hoops, so one can imagine that he learned to toughen up from playing driveway games that were a prologue to Carleton's well-known intense practices today.
"With Aaron I learned a lot from the way he went hard on every play, after every loose ball," says Gibson, who helped Ernestown win an OFSAA title in 2004, Doornekamp's final high school season. "He was a great role model.
"He’s a great guy and we're pretty good friends. Just the way he plays in practice taught me a lot. He never necessarily scored a lot for us at Ernestown, but he did all the little things like going for loose balls, taking the best player on defence.”
Doornekamp does that now with the unbeaten Ravens, where he plays a Scottie Pippen-like point forward position that takes advantage of his passing ability. His scoring and rebounding averages -- 14.4, 6.6 -- might seem low for a reigning second-team all-Canadian who spent his summer with Leo Rautins' Canadian national team. However, his numbers are actually slightly up over ’05-06, suggesting what he does can’t be measured by two statistics.
Gibson's university choices included Carleton and his hometown Queen's Golden Gaels, but he knows the Gee-Gees were the right fit for him.
"I wanted to get out of Kingston, experience another city," he said. "I loved what Coach was saying when he was recruiting me, I like the city and in terms of basketball, I liked what was great about our team … we play up-tempo, aggressive defence. We try to generate turnovers and to get our offence going."
The crowd on Tuesday will dwarf the 700-1,200 fans who typically turn out for most Ravens and Gee-Gees home games (as DeAveiro points out, those figures are pretty good since the OUA's scheduling format has both schools playing at home on the same night). However, between multiple trips to the Final 8 and pre-season games against NCAA D-1 schools, both teams are used to large crowds.
"It's going to be a little crazy (on Tuesday)," Gibson says. "But we went down and played the Cincinnati Bearcats in a huge arena, so we sort of know what it’s going to be like."
The kind of basketball atmosphere has just been foreign to Ottawa, but judging from the response on both campus and across the capital, we're adapting very, very well.
GAELS IN THE CAPITAL: DeAveiro says among OUA coaches, Queen's 8-4 record isn't a shocker. "I don't think it's a surprise," he says. "They're a well-coached team, they have two talented freshmen (Mitch Leger and Baris Ondul) who are coming along... They’re playing with a lot of confidence right now, they feel they can play with anybody anywhere and that's half the battle."
Queen's hoops squads face Ottawa tonight at Montpetit Hall before taking on Carleton tomorrow. As a personal note, just my luck that I'm working a weekend when all these hometown teams are in town.
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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