CIS CORNER: McCLEERY'S CONTRIBUTIONS EXPLAIN RAVENS' SUCCESS

Little late to the game here after marking St. Patrick's Day (wearing a blue shirt and drinking any manner of non-Irish beers, although some Guinness might have snuck in there...)

FINAL 8... Carleton 80, Ottawa 58: Post player Kevin McCleery (nine points in 14 minutes on 4-for-4 shooting, team-high 15 in the first-round win over Acadia) seems like the Carleton Ravens' Ed Nealy.

What's that supposed to mean? Bill James, the baseball guy, is a Kansan, which means college hoops is his second-favourite sport. James once referenced what former Kansas State coach Jack Hartman once said about Nealy, who played on a couple Sweet 16 teams at K-State and went on to a 10-year NBA career: "Talent is just being where you are supposed to be and doing what you are supposed to do."

Talent is just being where you are supposed to be and doing what you are supposed to do. McCleery, a reserve post, was one of several Ravens who did exactly that last night in Halifax, getting back-to-back layups when Carleton stretched the lead early in the second half of the real final. Obviously, the Nepean native didn't do it alone -- the Ravens got big defensive stops (Ottawa shot just 30 per cent for the game, with Josh Gibson-Bascombe going 3-for-11), they moved the ball with alacrity and someone pulled the string on a perfect pass.

That's an Ed Nealy kind of talent. Nealy, who you might remember as a spear carrier on the Kevin Johnson-Mark Chambers Phoenix Suns teams in the late '80s, was someone TV analysts would call physically limited -- or as James put it, someone who "couldn't win a jumping contest against a sack of flour."

McCleery, who as a rookie last year filled in at the Final 8 when Aaron Doornekamp was on crutches with an ankle injury, does look kind of unassuming. He's 6-foot-7, average height for a CIS post player, and has a kind of loping gait which makes him very easy to pick out during a TV broadcast when the players are running up the floor. One lingering memory from earlier this season was a game in January vs. Ryerson. On a post-up move, McCleery's feet got tangled with his defender's and he travelled. That happens all the time, but a Ryerson kid who was sitting on the bench fell over laughing. Who knows what he found so funny, but the thought was, "You're laughing when you're down 20 points to the best team in the country? What's wrong with this picture?"

McCleery isn't the smoothest guy around, but that merely belies what he does to help Carleton win. Whatever happens in the final vs. Brandon that tips off in about three hours, that speaks to why Carleton wins when everyone's ready to write off the Ravens. That speaks to what Dave Smart has figured out better and more importantly, applied better than anyone else who has ever coached university basketball in this country.

There's little reflections of that everywhere in Carleton's game, that hidden value -- take the way Doornekamp functions as an auxiliary point guard, or how Oz Jeanty forces turnovers and can often be the leading rebounder out of the guard spot. Come to think of it, in that game two months ago, the Ryerson player had been pulled after taking a technical foul for throwing the ball at Jeanty, who had just drawn a charge.

Other coaches see that too -- just not to the extent Smart and his coaching staff does.

Carleton is poised to make it five in a row today. Ryerson's been done for a month since it missed the OUA East playoffs and Kevin McCleery won't look awkward if he has a gold medal around his neck at around 6 p.m. Eastern tonight.

Gee-Gees sorrow: It's double disappointment for the U of O. Dave DeAveiro's team lost out to the Ravens, while the women's hockey Gee-Gees lost 5-0 again at their nationals, this time to the Alberta Pandas. The latter will play in the Monday morning consolation game.

Both teams deserved better fates and anything in the rest of this post will be little consolation. Everything is on the up and up for Shelley Coolidge's Gee-Gees program -- it has a couple players, notably Kayla Hottot and Kim Kerr, who showed in the Laurier game that they can play against anyone in the CIS. Meantime, there is talent in Eastern Ontario for women's hockey. The Ottawa Jr. Raiders had a strong season in the provincial junior loop and put two players on the Canada Games squad. The Gee-Gees' season -- and their playoff series with Carleton which had two overtime games -- might have done a lot to get those players to realize the benefits of staying closer to home.

The hoops Gee-Gees, well, let's see what DeAveiro does next year with the 24-second clock and a backcourt that can include Gibson-Bascombe, Donnie Gibson, Willy Manigat and Sean Peter, each of whom can run the floor and shoot like crazy. That said, it won't be easy to replace graduating seniors Jermaine Campbell, Alex McLeod and Curtis Shakespeare.

Related:
CIS Hoops.ca, SSN Canada blog

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.