FOOTBALL
- To someone who had to be elsewhere, it hard to wrap one's mind how the Ottawa Gee-Gees contrived to lose to the Western Mustangs 23-16 in an OUA semi-final. If you said the Gee-Gees would hold Western's running back Randy McAuley to 10 yards rushing, the expected score would have been, oh, something like 41-13.
What happened? Ottawa's leading receiver, David Crane, was ruled out with injuries, meaning star QB Josh Sacobie did not have his security blanket. It wasn't just that the receivers dropped first-down passes that might have gone to Crane; the young receivers weren't able to tap into his experience like they would have with him in uniform.
Three times, the Gee-Gees settled for field goal tries inside Western's 20-yard line, and they missed one. (Queen's, incidentally, also settled for kicking it three times in the red zone one week before.)
Throw in a couple blown coverages and the Gee-Gees ended up on the wrong end of the most unexpected semi-upset in the OUA since an 8-0 Western team was upset by Waterloo in 1999. - More football coverage is over at The CIS Blog. No sooner had Guelph run off the final seconds of its upset over Laurier, setting up the Yates Cup matchup vs. Western, than a friend called to say, "The Guelph Gryphons, that's your team for the next week."
Guhhhhh. Guelph is a fine team that has enough to work on without worrying about yours truly being a friggin' jinx. Guelph will be at home, they play tough defence (don't let that 24-point first quarter against Laurier be too much of an influence) and should match up well against Western's conservative offence.
HOCKEY
- Gaels: So long as Ryan Gibb stops something on the order of 79-of-84 shots each weekend, Queen's will be fine. They edged Ryerson 4-3 at the Memorial Centre on Saturday night to complete a four-point weekend and get to .500.
- Gee-Gees: The men's team had the dreaded no-point weekend, which could cost 'em in a tight Eastern Conference which doesn't seem to have any cupcake teams. One-time Sudbury Wolves forward Trevor Blanchard had a natural hat trick in the third period in Concordia's penalty-filled 4-2 win over the Gee-Gees on Sunday.
Rob Jarvis scored both for the Gee-Gees; Kevin Glode assisted on both goals in Saturday's 3-2 loss vs. McGill at Scotiabank Place.
The U of O women evened the season series with Carleton with a 3-0 win, with Joelle Charlebois factoring in all three goals (she had one less point than she did in her entire rookie season) and Jessika Audet notching the shutout.
HOOPS
- Ravens/Gee-Gees: The U of O's first basketball road games at Lakehead next Friday will be webcast at http://events.news-cast.com/events/Basketball, starting with the women's game at 6 p.m. The same source will also air the Carleton-Lakehead games on Saturday night.
The Ravens and Gee-Gees women's team open the season on Tuesday at the Ravens' Nest, of course. - Elsewhere... Cassandra Carpenter of Kanata put up 21 points and 10 boards in Laurentian's three-point loss to York. South of the border, Vermont's Courtnay Pilypaitis (of Orleans) had nine points, nine assists and four steals in a pre-season game vs. the Bishop's Gaiters on Saturday.
Last but not least, hat tip to the Gee-Gees women's soccer team for clinching a return trip to the CIS championship, as they ultimately ended up OUA runners-up to the York Lions.
One more footy note: Nod to a one-time Ernestown Eagle, Paul Paudyn, for scoring the only goal the Queen's Golden Gaels men's soccer team needed to beat Carleton 1-0 for the OUA bronze medal. It's not a trip to nationals, but it's a nice consolation prize. Another Gaels footy standout from that corner of the universe, Wade Ennis, was named an OUA all-star last week.
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5 comments:
Actually Neate, the Gee Gee women's soccer team did win the OUA title last year, beating Queen's 1-0 in Kingston.. Then both went to the nationals in BC where Queen's took the silver medal and Ottawa took the bronze medal.
Western exploited what was the weakness in the Ottawa defence , coverage on the corners. Last year the GGs had two of the finest corners in the CIS, Anthony Plante-Ajah and Delroy Clarke.
Plant-Ajah graduated. Clarke was injured early in the first quarter in week three playing Western. He played only off and on during the season from that point , but I guess he never recovered fully from the injury and was out of the line-up yesterday, For some reason not much was said about him during the season and it was not even mentioned in the pre-game previews, that he would be absent from playing the hot corner.
However, from watching all year I can say Ottawa's coverage was weaker when he was not there. Nobody exploited this as well as Western did.
Too bad that the Ottawa vets missed going on to the bigger games. I think the Gee gees will be in a bit of a rebuilding mode next season as they work a fair number of new guys into the line-up.
Actually, Clarke was on the field part of the game, so don,t understand why he was not on the corner the whole game.
Good catch on the soccer... what was I thinking there?
Queen's did end up finishing ahead of Ottawa at nats, though, where they went silver-bronze.
as per the football, the injury to davie mason set up the mustang comeback. he was able to run all over the 'stangs early in the game, putting up 115 yards on only 12 carries. piche, realizing that his receivers were letting him down, was just starting to utilize the big back when he was injured early in the third on a horse collar tackle. had the gee-gees had mason for the second half - other than returning for one 16-yard rush - i think they could have controlled the game and kept the 'stangs offence off the field.
the gee-gees blown coverages helped to move the chains for western, but some respect should be paid to michael faulds for using his legs to convert a couple of second and longs to keep the drives alive. in an unremarkable game, his timely rushes stood out.
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