Blog blast past: When Doornekamp's MVP performance was for some birds of a different feather ...

Former Carleton Ravens hoops star Aaron Doornekamp is on Canada's roster for the FIBA world championship, which begins Saturday in Turkey. From March 19, 2007, here's a post from someone from the same corner of the world, written the day the Odessa native was MVP of the CIS Final 8 after scoring 20 points in a championship-game win over Brandon.

Back in the day, Ernestown Secondary School had an English teacher named Peter Peart. Give a weak answer in his classroom — the sacred confines of 208 — and often you'd get zinged, "Good enough for Odessa."

With that line, Mr. Peart* summed up everything about the hometown and alma mater of Aaron Doornekamp (pictured), who was the linchpin of the Carleton Ravens' latest national championship run on the weekend.

Odessa, Ont., is a basic bedroom community which has had 1,000 people forever and hasn't changed much since I graduated in 1996 (I lived between Odessa and Bath, another bedroom community). It's so nondescript that during the Capital Hoops Classic in January, one writer asked the rest of the press box denizens, "Where's Odessa?" even though there was a good possibility he had driven past it on Hwy. 401 dozens of times.

Anyway, "good enough for Odessa" laid it out there. You had a choice: Be small time and never live a day in your life, or go for the big time. You might pull it off, but it could also be a royal asskicking.

Hopefully that gives some context to why it was such a trip yesterday, a for a fellow ex-Ernestown Eagle to see Doornekamp hugging his proud father Henk on the Halifax Metro Centre floor in front of thousands of people and a national TV audience. Aaron, the last in the Doornekamp-Smart line of succession that basically was one-half to two-thirds of Ernestown's basketball program for about a decade, kicked plenty of ass himself to help secure the Ravens' fifth straight national title.

Canadians generally don't do the whole alumni thing like Americans do when it comes to their high schools. Ernestown is no exception in this regard, but damn is it freakin' sweet to see one of our own garner such accolades. It almost makes up all the jokes and snide comments people make about a rural high school, along with the myth about buying a statue of the horse instead of football equipment, which is even acknowledged on the school homepage.

My mom teaches at ESS. Last April, a popular recent graduate, Tristan Webb, was killed after being struck by a train. A few weeks later, three students were charged with making alleged Internet death threats, which made national headlines. Right after the new school year started, there was a pellet gun shooting on a school bus which occurred the same day as the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal. It's been a rough 12 months, so any positive publicity for Ernestown is really good these days.

So call it cornball, maybe even a little sad on my part, but yeah, it's OK to vicariously celebrate this.

On Saturday, you could watch one former Eagle, '96 grad Adnan Virk, anchor NCAA Tournament coverage on The Score in the afternoon, then flip over to TSN and see Aaron Doornekamp play a big part Carleton's semi-final win over Ottawa. Was there another high school in in Canada, let alone one with 650 students in a village of 1,000 people, which had two of its grads playing prominent roles in the hoopla for both the U.S. and Canadian versions of March Madness on the weekend?

Good enough for Odessa? Hell, we're good enough for the whole country. One cannot help but think back to mentors such as Mr. Peart, who saw that we were. Thanks, Aaron, for making sure some of us can't forget where we came from.

(* No relation to Neil Peart of Rush fame, although over the years Peter probably gulled more than one teenage metalhead who asked. Deadpanning, "Yes, he's my brother," would have them going, usually for a couple seconds.)

Hoser hoops heaven... Canada worlds-bound

Canada Basketball needed Friday night the way a man engulfed in flames could use a glass of water.

That's is a best stab at capturing the meaning of Canada earned a spot at the 2010 world basketball championship with an 80-76 win over the Dominican Republic at the qualifier in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As Doug Smith of the Toronto Star wrote, "The magnitude of the win cannot be overstated. With solid development programs at the under-19 and under-17 levels, Canada desperately needed to see some success at the senior level to give the teenagers something to aspire to."

There is hope, to borrow that overused one-word aphorism. It was furnished by Jermaine Anderson, Carl English, Levon Kendall, Andy Rautins, Jesse Young and a Carleton Raven, Aaron Doornekamp. None are household names with the rank-and-file Canadian sports fan, although Aaron might be pushing for the status of being Ernestown Secondary School's most famous alumnus after those two cooler-than-freon three-pointers he drained in the fourth quarter to keep the Dominicans at bay. Whatever is to come — and there is lots more to come — for Canada on the court, Friday felt like a catalytic event.

Please remember, if you are so inclined, which group of quote, unquote obscure Euro-ballers helped with this big step forward. Canada had only NBAer at this tournament, the Miami Heat forward Joel Anthony. The team was still celebrating when Leo Rautins told TrueHoop that he wants to have a few more NBA players next summer in Turkey. He's hoping Steve Nash will take time out from saving the world to lace up for his country one last time. The San Antonio Spurs forward Matt Bonner, an ex-Raptor who is married to a Toronto woman, is taking out citizenship. Bonner would be a good fit into the FIBA game, which prizes a big man who can shoot. Rautins is hopeful of getting Jamaal Magloire (don't hold your breath).

Meantime, as Smith alluded to, Canada has a lot of young talent coming up such as Junior Cadougan, Mangisto Arop, Kelly Olynyk, Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson. Some of the guys who were on the floor Friday will be pushed out in the years to come, such is the nature of sports.

Perhaps the San Juan crew will stand out in time the way Blue Jays fans remember Doug Ault and Bob Bailor. They got it started.

It is understandable if people do not consider Canada earning its first world berth since 2002 as a big deal. The only Team Canada most people across this great country care about, let's be honest, is the one with skates and sticks which will hit the ice in Vancouver next February at the Olympics. That is fine. However, some do believe being a proud Canadian and having a serious basketball jones can overlap, no matter what is implied by Molson's ads.

Maybe there is no deeper meaning to that beyond just loving basketball. Cheering for Canada on the hardwood, with the U.S. having such a larger player pool and so many resources devoted to hoops, is a lesson in being an underdog. It also seems to evoke the doubt Canadians are always going to face. That's why it's awesome, speaking as someone from the same corner of the world, to see that Doornekamp played a significant role in the final minutes with those two threes. He's had doubters all along, being from Odessa, having played at a smaller high school, making the national team from a CIS school, and he has come out shining.


It is almost seems like living in the past to play up that Aaron is an ESS grad, but then again there are not many Eagles even compared to other Kingston-area high schools, so attention must be paid. Imagine some young baller, maybe in Toronto, or Vancouver, who will grow up to represent his country. He might never hear of places such as Odessa, or Patrick's Cove, N.L., Carl English's hometown, but a small debt will be owed to those places. And that's pretty cool.

DanyWatch: Talking about the game for a change ... but there's a time and place

How about that: On Saturday, when Ottawa Senators designated quitter Dany Heatley dominated in headlines and on sports networks, the Ottawa Citizen dedicated an editorial to sports. Only it was about Dave Smart and the Carleton Ravens!

It is freakin' sweet to see the "Eastern Ontario Ravens" get that kind of love. Carleton could not buy that kind of publicity. When else will Odessa be mentioned in the editorial page of a newspaper in Canada's capital city? Effin' A. It would not do to soak the blanket, wring it out and rant about sports being on the editorial page, or why newspapers still have editorial pages. That seems to be where this is headed. Come along, let's all be contrarian bastards!

First off, the op-ed pages are a huge space-waster. People make up their own minds rightly or wrongly. The Simpsons nailed it 10 years ago when Ned Flanders told Lisa he read everything in the newspaper, "but the opinion page. I don't need to be told what to think — by anyone living."

What Spencer Hall recently said at The Sporting Blog about the death of the general sports columnist goes triple for the op-ed pages. (Pete Toms, always an early adopter, pointed out in conversation a couple years ago there was no reason for him to read a general sports columnist.)

"... the audience is no longer captive. They can roam the internet looking for whatever they like, and if they're under 40, they're not waiting for it to come to them on their doorstep. They are still prisoner to one constant, however: the hunger for quality ... it's not because the audience lost the taste for something necessary. It is because they were making do all along with what they had, and left the instant they got a better offer.

There are practical reasons. Reporters and editors are having a tough time finding enough space for good storytelling. The high cost of paper, for instance, has meant some newspapers have reduced their paper size. The Ottawa Sun recently lost an inch.

Day after day, though, two perfectly good "opens" (newsroom argot for pages with no ads) are tossed away for no good reason other than it's always been done that way. To hell with that. First and foremost, op-ed pages do nothing for advertisers, due to the outdated view advertising and editorial must be separate. Meantime, it is inefficient use of space:

• Editorials: A media outlet's stance can be expressed by betting blending analysis and insight into the articles at the front of the paper. There is a reporter at the Simcoe (Ont.) Reformer, Monte Sonnenberg, who has always worked on that principle. Monte always had his facts together while realizing it is more fun and rewarding for all if the reporter lends a certain philosophical bent to the process (to borrow Heatley's favourite word). .
  
  Monte won a National Newspaper Award recently in the local reporting category. It was not by happenstance. It was something he built up to by refining his pitch.
  
  
• Letters to the editor: Put them on the Internet or direct users to message boards which is what newspapers should have started doing in 1995. Instead, they got started about 10 years late trying to democratize the media and even then, stopped about a quarter of the way.
  
  
• Opinion columists: 95 per cent of the time, any reader worth having knows what the opinion columnist is going to say just by the headline. Most just preach to the converted. To borrow some Flandersese, they have become that gosh-darn pre-dilly-ictable. It is the media equivalent of plain white bread with a glass of water for dippin'.
  

You see the irony. The era of the general sports columnist is over because people can get sports opinions so fast and furious. Yet newspapers, and the Citizen is not being singled out here because it happens quite often, are putting sports opinions in place of news coverage. They are chasing a percentage they cannot catch. What a waste.

Normally, what the Citizen puts in editorials would not matter much to me. It only came to attention via cishoops.ca. That kind of proves the point. As Hall says, the model now for opinion writing is "a devoted specialist ... or even a tangent-hopping single-topic writer ... or heaven forbid, writers who didn't write about sports at all."

An editorial on a sports really should be reserved for when it will affect people who don't follow sports. A good example is when politicians are mulling whether to spend taxpayers' money on a new stadium (and isn't that a going concern in Ottawa right now?)

This more about the mentality, than the Citizen's choice of topic. It was ballsy for it to break the Hockey Reflex. It was a bit of an oasis at a time when the hockey sweater Canada will wear at the Vancouver Olympics is a lead story on a CBC national newscast (take it away, TSM).

There is the argument that media outlets should be more responsive to readers' issues. The Globe & Mail's profile of thetyee.ca's founder, David Beers, mentioned how it once "posted a request for donations, with the twist that donors could vote for which political issues they would like the site to cover, with the money divided accordingly. Over $10,000 poured in."

In Ottawa's case, everyone and her/his cat allegedly wanted to hear about what's to be done with this Dany Heatley. All summer, anything Heatley-related has usually been one of the most popular stories on ottawasun.com.

It does not matter that nothing new whatsoever came out of Friday's clusterfudge. It is even more irrelevant that expecting anything of worth to come out of an athlete's conference call is absurd and anyone who tried to trade off should feel ashamed. Dany Heatley needs to ask his agents what his opinion is on toothpaste, so why are we wasting our beautiful minds hanging on his every word? There is still a far greater audience for Senators non-news than there is for Canadian university basketball. And that's fine.

It was wicked to read about the Eastern Ontario Ravens. Never mind that someone working for free coined the phrase "flinty Eastern Ontario toughness" before the Kingston trio of Rob Saunders, Stu Turnbull and Aaron Doornekamp completed their eligibility. It can also be excused that Syracuse was not included among the big-time Big East basketball schools, even though it did have NBA lottery pick Jonny Flynn playing for them last season.

This is Dave Smart's due, for certain:

"There is the sportsmanship that the team shows in its wins and rare losses. And there is also the pedigree of the players. If you look down the Ravens roster, you will see, not unlike other years, that of the 14 listed players on the program, only two are from outside Eastern Ontario. They are not the Carleton Ravens but the Eastern Ontario Ravens. They are players grown at home.

" ... Smart suffers no fools, accepts no mistakes, will not countenance any bad sportsmanship on the court. He rides referees like cowboy on a bronco. He is single-willed and accepts nothing less from his players. You must be a patient man to play for Smart but the rewards are great and he garners respect from his charges. He makes his players better people."

OK, so here's a simple answer about the article that seemed to be the spur under one's fingernail: Carleton cannot buy that kind of publicity.

Of course, that's because op-ed pages don't bring in any advertisers and don't add any value. You see the artificially created dilemma.

CIS Corner: Ravens' Doornekamp inks deal with Italy's Eldo Caserta

You might say Aaron Doornekamp turned some heads as his own was getting rattled.

Doug Smith had a passing reference to it yesterday. Some Googling reveals that the graduated Carleton star and Canadian national team forward has signed with Eldo Caserta in Serie A, Italy's top division.

Signing with a team in the Italian league is a pretty good deal for Doornekamp, whose other brother and former high school teammate Nate also played professionally in Europe after he finished his career in Europe. Obviously, the bleeds-it-leads folk in the media might draw some amusement out of Doornekamp signing with a team in the country after the little set-to during that friendly two weeks ago.

Doornekamp, as you well know, is training in Puerto Rico as Team Canada readies for next week's Tuto Marchand Cup in San Juan. That is a tune-up tournament for the Aug. 26-Sept. 6 upcoming FIBA Americas championship, where Canada needs a top four finish to qualify for the 2010 worlds.

Obviously, with the hometown connection (that Ernestown green, eh), one has to feel pretty happy for Aaron and his extended basketball family.

Update: Mark Wacyk has reaction from Carleton coach Dave Smart, as well as an Osvaldo Jeanty update over at cishoops.ca. Please click through.

(Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

Basketball: Ex-Raven Doornekamp at centre of dust-up

The Italian term from "brawl" is apparently rissa. What's the translation for awk-ward?

Canada-Italy is about the last international basketball matchup where you would expect punches to be thrown during a friendly. Italy's team includes two members of the Raptors, Andrea Bargnani and Marco Belinelli. Raptors television analyst Leo Rautins coaches Canada. Raps assistant GM Maurizio Gherardini, who is from Italy, works with Canada Basketball. Nevertheless, it happened on Saturday. It was touched off when forward Stefano Mancinelli sucker-punched good Kingston boy Aaron Doornekamp at the tailend of a very chippy game. Italian media reports say it was in retaliation for being elbowed. Whatever brought it on, punching someone on the basketball court is beyond the pale.



What happened was that Canada guard Andy Rautins, who plays at Syracuse, had the ball on the left wing. Two defenders pressed him, forcing him to give up the ball. Doornekamp and point guard Jermaine Anderson both flashed high to give Rautins an outlet. It looked like Doornekamp had his arm out to ward off Mancinelli as he went for either a deflection or steal.

Reading Babelfished articles doesn't make that clear if that was when this Doornekamp elbow occurred or if it was on a previous play (some of the reports say it was under the basket and as you can see, they were out near midcourt).

Apparently, it had been a physical game between the two teams, who were playing for the second time in a week, so there might have been bad blood. It is also a different world over in Euro-ball. There is a different standard of officiating and there are not the same safeguards that the NBA has implemented to stop brawling since the Malice at the Palace almost five years ago.

Whenever this happens, no matter what the sport, some people will always say that the guy had it coming, brought it on himself. It goes extra since it is a player from the Ravens, who are resented in certain Canadian basketball circles.

There is no illusion Doornekamp is an angel on the court. It is hard to become a key cog in four national championship teams in five years while playing nice. Like any forward whom you would want on your basketball team, he plays with some edge, no quarter asked, none given. His style drove a lot of opponents to frustration over his five seasons with the Ravens while playing for his uncle, Dave Smart.

Perhaps this is a well, duh statement, but you know some knucklehead on a message board, perhaps a current CIS student-athlete, will say Doornekamp brought that on. This was karma. Anyone who would say that needs to question their motivation for being in sports. No one has that coming just because they play hard and earn their space.

Considering the damage a punch thrown by a 6-foot-8, 200-pound-plus basketball player such as Mancinelli could cause, it's fortunate there was not a serious injury.

Granted, easy enough to editorialize when the player from one's neck of the woods was the punchee. What if Doornekamp was the puncher? Well, the way it seems to work in the Ravens' realm is that a good player does anything to not come off the court. Striking an opponent and risking a suspension seems like a very poor way to achieve that end. Smart's teams go all-out and make opponents rue thinking they could get an offensive rebound or an easy layup, but punch a player from behind while play is going on? Never.

On the clip, actually, former Carleton guard Ryan Bell can also be seen stepping in front of a teammate to keep him from getting involved.

Bargnani also tried to play peacemaker. Canadian forward Jesse Young seemed very agitated and Bargnani put an arm around him and said something, which seemed to calm Young down. For now, the feeling should just be a sigh of relief it was not worse.

Meantime, not be a Don Cherry about this, but it is something to see that flinty Eastern Ontario toughness make a player a continent away go berserk, especially in a friendly.

(Update: Coach Leo Rautins told Sun Media "It's all good ... no big deal" and added Doornekamp was uninjured. It was a lead item at sportsnet.ca.)

There is plenty of coverage from Italian media here, here, here, here and here.

CIS Corner: Ravens confirm St. John's game

Confirming an earlier report, the defending CIS men's basketball champion Carleton Ravens will face a Big East team in September, the St. John's Red Storm.

The game is Sept. 6, the Sunday of Labour Day weekend, but at the Ravens' Nest rather than Scotiabank Place, which is booked for an Aerosmith concert that weekend. Presumably, St. John's will also play the Ottawa Gee-Gees while in the capital.

It's a downer not to have games at SBP, but ultimately a big arena rock band is a better seller than basketball in Ottawa, even if Aerosmith is a couple decades past its best-before date. (If you were ever in doubt about Ottawa's musical tastes, last week KISS drew a crowd of 30,000 and Green Day got 8,000. KISS wasn't even good when they were the same age as the members of Green Day.)

The Red Storm were 16-18 last season, but are considered a "veteran team" (New York Daily News). In terms of hoops celebrity, one of their main forwards is 6-foot-7 Anthony Mason Jr., son of the former New York Knicks player. Mason is coming off an ankle injury and St. John's coach Norm Roberts noted the Canada trip will give him a chance to get back to game speed, so hopefully he would play extended minutes.

Carleton has a history with the Big East. They hosted Villanova, which went to the Final Four last season, at the start of 2007-08. They also took Rick Pitino's Louisville Cardinals to overtime in September 2006 and if memory serves, both they and the Gee-Gees have travelled south to play Cincinnati.

Carleton's release also confirmed a game on Aug. 18 vs. the Towson Tigers, as also previously noted. The Tigers will play a Ravens alumni team on Aug. 17, face the Ottawa Gee-Gees that night and face the Ravens the following evening.

On the women's side, coach Taffe Charles' Ravens will host two D-1 teams, Fairleigh Dickinson and Vermont, on Aug. 27-28, both 8 p.m. tip-offs at the Ravens' Nest. The latter game should be a homecoming for Vermont senior guard Courtnay Pilypaitis, a St. Peter alumna who led the Catamounts to the America East conference title and the NCAA Tournament last season. Vermont is also playing a game in Waterloo, since that's the hometown of another of their starters, May Kotsopoulos.

CIS Corner: Another Big East visitor

A couple notes on our teams of interest in The 613 ...

Big East teams seem to love coming to Ottawa.

Sources say the St. John's Red Storm will be coming to the nation's capital for one of the cross-border college basketball games around Labour Day weekend that have proven very popular.

St. John's is coming off a 16-18 season and a first-loss to Richmond in the CBI post-season tournament. The Red Storm would be the third team from their conference to come up in the past four years. Louisville came up in 2006 and Villanova visited in '07. There's no word yet about dates. Having the Ravens and Gee-Gees play a doubleheader at Scotiabank Place on Labour Day Saturday worked very well last season. However, Scotiabank Place is booked for an Aerosmith concert that weekend.

There is also talk that Carleton has a game arranged with the Towson Tigers from the Colonial Athletic Association. (All this author knows about Towson is that it was Elaine Benes' alma mater on Seinfeld.)

Also, the Toronto Raptors are coming for training camp. Doug Smith had it on his blog some time back:

"Oh yeah, did I tell you that we’re coming to Ottawa for sure for training camp next fall?"

C'est la vie for Ottawa sports coverage that there has not been a story in either daily. You would think someone on the Senators asked for a trade.

CIS Corner: Losses hit Gaels hard; mulling the Ravens revival

Being on vacation last week precluded weighing in on a couple pertinent university football stories, the emerging details about a Carleton Ravens revival and Queen's losses to the CFL.

Ravens/Gee-Gees: Ottawa's WCE — whose turn is it to wear the mayor's chain of office this week? — could still screw this up. After last week, it is easier to picture a double launch in 2012, with the Ravens joining the Reconstituted.

CFL commissioner Mark Cohon said recently that Ottawa will come back into the pro league in 2012. Three years is enough lead time for Carleton to prepare the proper exploitation for a football revival.

Carleton would basically run on the Laval model, with the football team almost separate from the university save for academics and admissions. Quoth John Ruddy, one of the Lansdowne Live leaders (and a former Ravens defensive back):

"The Ravens would utilize our professional training facilities, they’d play in a new, fan-friendly stadium and they’d leverage our marking and operations staff ... At the end of the day, I think those elements would benefit recruiting and player development and fast-track success on the field."

David Naylor, the excellent Globe & Mail football reporter, noted this gives Jeff Hunt, Roger Greenberg, John Shenkman and Ruddy an important card to play in their negotiations with the city:

"... The revitalization of Lansdowne starts to look less like the building of a home for a CFL team and more like the construction of a community asset that will be used for two sports at both the amateur and professional levels.

That is surely the message the (Jeff) Hunt group wants to get out in advance of city council vote scheduled for Aug. 26."

Two questions pop immediately to mind:

1. How does this affect the Ottawa Gee-Gees, who play at Lansdowne? As an ottawasun.com user noted, the Gee-Gees would not want to play at a stadium run by a group which is putting its fundraising and marketing expertise toward their cross-town rivals. It would be similar to the situation where Waterloo used Laurier's stadium for many years, the irony here being the Gee-Gees have been a powerhouse while Carleton was an also-ran more often than not.
   
   
2. Carleton coming back likely means another OUA school is exploring starting a football team to bring the conference to even 12. Not to play coy, but feel free to speculate away about who might be that school. The one these ears heard would be a stunner.

Golden Gaels: Losing Dee Sterling to the Edmonton Eskimos probably leaves more of a hole in Pat Sheahan's two-deep than Mike Giffin making the Montréal Alouettes.

That is not a knock on Giffin, who made the Als as a fullback and special-teamer. Sterling going up to the CFL probably was less anticipated.

Meantime, Thaine Carter, the middle linebacker, ripped up his shoulder at Winnipeg Blue Bombers camp and Osie Ukwuoma might remain on the Calgary Stampeders practice roster, so that is three players lost off the front seven if Sterling stays in Edmonton and Carter does not comeback from his surgery. In order, that means Queen's is without a linebacker who could play sideline to sideline, its best rusher coming off the edge and a disruptor in the middle of the defensive line.

The Whig's article from last Friday noted cornerback-kick returner Jimmy Allin is a maybe to return for a fifth season. Centre Dan Bederman is "expected to return."

Meantime, good on Giffin for making the Alouettes. He was in tough after converting from tailback, since one of the other fullback spots was being used for Martin Bédard, a tight end from UConn who can also long snap. Giffin is not the first Queen's rushing star to earn his keep in the CFL as a fill-in back and special teamer. Bryan Crawford is going into his fifth season with the Toronto Argonauts, while Brad Elberg did it for the better part of a decade.

It just took Giff a little time to commit to the switch:

"I didn't go in with a good attitude last year (with Hamilton) ... My head just wasn't in it with my wife (Heidi) being eight months pregnant. I didn't think I had to perform. I was naive."
— Kingston Whig-Standard

Related:
Carleton aims for return of football (Terri Saunders, Sun Media, June 25)

(Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

CIS Corner: Longer hockey schedule for OUA

Notes on our athletes/teams of interest from The 613 ...

Ottawa Gee-Gees coach Dave Leger was kind enough to explain the tweaks to the OUA men's hockey league, both the schedule and playoff format.

The OUA has expanded the playoffs and eliminated the first-round playoff bye in the wake of a post-season where none of four playoff seeds made it to the Queen's Cup, the conference championship series. (Trois-Rivières was the only one to win a playoff round, and it needed two overtimes in the decider vs. Fred Parker's Carleton Ravens.) The trade-off is 16 of 19 teams will make the playoffs — 8-of-10 in the East, which adds the expansion Nipissing Lakers, 8-of-9 in the West.

It seems much tidier just to revise the post from earlier.

• The playoffs will be a true 1-through-8, meaning an end to barely .500 teams earning the No. 2 seed and getting a first-round bye. Last season's No. 2 seeds, Toronto in the East and York in the West, had the fourth- and fifth-best records in their conferences.
  
  "The main feature is having two more playoff teams on each side," Leger said. "We'll still have the four divisions, but the only purpose for those delineations is to help sort out the cross-over scheduling."
  
  
• There is more of an emphasis on conference play. Cross-over scheduling will be set up to "achieve balance over a period of time." It will take 3-4 years for everyone to play everyone, but the intention is to address concerns that certain teams played the Lakeheads of the world more often than some of their rivals.
  
  "There was a real appetite from the coaches to have a cross-over," Leger says. "There was talk about having all East teams play all West teams, but some of the coaches and athletic directors weren't too happy. However, there was a lot of interest to have a cross-over, and thankfully we're going to have one.
  
  "Having a strong team like a Waterloo or a Western is good for our team and good for our school."
  
  
• It seems like cross-over play, based on two teams' schedules which were posted online, will all take place before Jan. 1. That means teams will be going head-to-head during the closing sprint that begins on the first weekend of January, which is a positive development.
  
  Last season, Ottawa was dealing with an injury bug when it went just 1-2-1 during a four-game swing vs. Mid West teams, which made it harder for hold off Queen's for the final playoff spot.
  
  
• The schedule is sticking at 28 games. Lakehead and Queen's each posted schedules that had 30 conference games, but the schedule increase didn't get approval.
  

As a personal opinion, the net gain seems to be increasing the integrity of the post-season. There might be some sniping about increasing the size of the playoff tournament, especially after Canada West reduced its from six teams to four. However, the OUA is essentially doing the same thing, getting rid of byes in the post-season that can leave a team sitting around and doing special teams drills for a week.

Meantime, Leger did pass along some recruiting news with a Kingston angle. Stay-at-home defenceman Tyler Hill, who captained the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs team which won the Central Canadian title, is joining the Gee-Gees.

(Thanks to Todd Mathers for the tip. Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

Noteworthy

• It's a few days old, but Queen's linebacker Thaine Carter is vowing to play like an angry young man at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers training camp after going in the last round of the draft.
• Point guard Courtnay Pilypaitis, the Ottawa native who led the U of Vermont to the NCAA Tournament, has been named to Canada's women's basketball team for the 2009 World University Games, which begin July 1 in Belgrade, Serbia.
  
  This probably has to be folded into that omnibus post about how badly Canada Basketball is being hosed (by the media, corporate Canada, the federal ministry of sport assuming Canada still has one, and so on), but Canada is travelling with only 10 players. That is like sending a hockey team to the world juniors with only five defencemen.

CIS Corner: Moving by Stealth; escalating the Canal War

Notes on our athletes/teams of interest from The 613, plus some notes on Toronto's newest basketball team, the Toronto Stealth ...

WOMEN'S HOOPS: The Toronto Stealth semi-pro team began its maiden season in the Women's Blue-Chip Basketball League on Saturday ... suffice to say, Toronto Star hoops chronicler Doug Smith came away impressed:

"It was a rather interesting, and somewhat surprising to me, night at Ryerson on Saturday. I was fully impressed by the crowd – more than 100 doesn’t sound like much but I’ve been at national team events the past without audiences that big and it was a Saturday night of a long weekend for a team no one’s heard of at a gym that you need a GPS to find.

"The calibre of play wasn't the greatest but you have to figure it's only going to get better and that’s the most important thing. There needs to be places for women – and men – to develop their skills during or after their college careers and this is a perfect opportunity.

"Minor league sports, particularly minor league basketball is this (Toronto) market, is a dicey proposition at best and who knows how long the Stealth will actually last. But I think it deserves a chance, and it deserves some support; I presume I'll be back if time permits and if I had a young daughter interested in the game, I'd take her to see the Stealth play some night.

"You should, too."

The Stealth's CIS contingent includes former Brock star Jodie Ebeling, a five-time OUA all-star who was once invited to a WNBA free-agent camp. Three current or former U of T posts, Laila Bellony, Tara Kinnear and Nicki Schutz, are also on the team, along with guard Kim Lee (Waterloo) and forwards Kerri Jilesen (Laurier) and Ashley Stephen (St. FX).

The Stealth's home games are at Kerr Hall on the Ryerson campus, all on Saturday night at 7 p.m. Their home games include:

• May 30 vs. Flint
• June 6 vs. Detroit
• June 27 vs. Detroit
• July 18 vs. Montreal

NOTES FROM A CROSS-TOWN RIVALRY

It would be remiss to not share a comment from cisblog.ca on a post about Shelley Coolidge leaving the University of Ottawa to lead the Carleton Ravens women's hockey team.

"This is only the beginning as coaches realize the wide difference in ability, social skills and production between the 2 athletic directors and commitment to sport at the 2 universities."

FOOTBALL

• The Paper of Record had a nice feature on former Ottawa Gee-Gees footballer Trevor Monaghan's work with Cree youth in Chisasabi, Que., near James Bay.

  "This is the second year Monaghan has brought kids from Chisasabi. Last year, 17 came made the two-day bus ride. This year, 25 have achieved the school attendance level required to come to camp.
  
  Monaghan is planning to start a summer six-on-six tackle program in Chisasabi, a community that doesn't yet have a dedicated football field.
  
  The camp in Ottawa is spring training for players, whom he hopes will bring their new enthusiasm back to other teens in Chisasabi."

  Monaghan's bio says he played for the Gee-Gees from 1997-99 and again in 2001. One wishes him all the best in his efforts.
  
  
• The indispensable Capital Region Football Blog has an update on the collegiate destination if some local gridders: Guard James Lindsay (Nepean HS/Ottawa Myers Riders) and defensive tackle James Young (Gloucester/Cumberland Panthers) are headed to Acadia; linebacker Kyle Norris (South Carleton High School/Myers) is going to Saint Mary's

(Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

Related:
Semi-pro league gives women's hoops a boost (Doug Smith, Toronto Star, May 17)

CIS Corner: Coolidge crosses canal to coach Carleton

Notes on our athletes and teams of interest from The 613 ... incidentally, it's possible former Duke basketball player Greg Paulus could be the second-most famous student in Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications, after Kinger.

Ravens: Veteran coach Shelley Coolidge crossing the canal to lead the Carleton women's hockey team after being behind the bench at Ottawa for many seasons. It's a pretty good score for Carleton and if memory serves, Coolidge will be the first woman to be head coach of the team since it moved up to varsity. It could be taken as a sign Carleton is really trying to push women's hockey.

There have been others who coached at both schools, most notably Andy Sparks in basketball, and probably a few in football too.

Golden Gaels: Queen's put out a formal announcement Wednesday (someone was wiped after covering a high school track meet on a humid day) announcing offensive linemen Josh Prinsen (6-foot-7, 290 lbs.) from Bayridge in Kingston and Matt Lapointe (6-foot-4, 270 lbs.) from St. Peter in Ottawa are coming. (This was noted a few months back.)

Meantime, Google alerts turn up the strangest stuff, like an article out of Michigan about a scholar-athlete named Jamie McDevitt-Irvin who plans to skate for the women's hockey Gaels. In the absence of an educated guess about her hockey skill, there was this curious quote:

" 'There's not a lot of difference between Canadian schools and American schools,' McDevitt-Irwin said. 'They speak English, although I did take a French class at Central Michigan just in case.' "

That shouldn't come up too often in Kingston.

Hoops: Two players from the 613 will play for Canada at this summer's FIBA Americas qualifiers. Kellie Ring, a guard for Louis-Riel and the Ottawa Shock club team, is on the cadette team. Jory McDonald, a 6-foot-1 post player from Kingston, was the subject of a great feature in today's Kingston Whig-Standard by Mike Koreen.

The cadet team is bringing in Ryan Evan, a 6-foot-10 (!) post from Earl of March in Kanata, for a final look. They have six players vying for the final two roster spots.

(It's been a while since a Kingston-area lady baller went down to a NCAA Division 1 school. At one point a decade ago, there were three at one time. Major points if you can remember.)

CIS Corner: Hoops hotshots Hinz, Faulkner commit to CU; reports

Two out of three ain't bad for Dave Smart and the Carleton Ravens.

Much vaunted forward Tyson Hinz of Orleans according to Hoopstars Canada, is committed to Carleton. Six-foot-5 swingman Greg Faulkner out of Kingston, also a Hoopstars Canada top 50 player, is headed to Carleton, the Kingston Whig-Standard reported this morning.

Hinz' decision was probably the most closely watched in Ottawa basketall circles, since he led his St. Matthew Tigers to a 45-1 season and the Ontario AAA title. His dad, Will Hinz, was a superb player at McGill during the 1980s, where he has a Rhodes Scholar at McGill, which sparked talk his son would follow in his footsteps, plus Redmen coach Craig Norman has often recruited in the Ottawa area (Orleans' Kevin Dulude was the lynchpin when Norman had RMC playing winning basketball in the first half of the 2000s.)

Tyson Hinz is a bit of a combo forward who does everything well, so some Aaron Doornekamp comparisons will be inevitable.

Incidentally, Faulkner's club coaches were Rob Smart Sr. and Duncan Cowan, the Queen's coaches. His literary namesake should concoct such a subplot.

"Duncan and Rob have done a lot for me to get me where I am. It's just that I want to move on and try something different."
— Faulkner, via Whig sports editor Mike Koreen

The estimable Koreen also caught up with Acadia-bound post player Owen Klassen, who played club ball with Faulkner on the Kingston Impact and against him in high school. Klassen's high school coach at Bayridge Secondary, Geoff Stewart, told The Whig:

"Owen can make a significant impact. I've compared him to Aaron Doornekamp. He has a similar skill set, he's tall and co-ordinated and he can play inside and outside like Aaron."

Klassen would have been a great get. The upshot is the Ravens are getting the second- and third-best players out of Eastern Ontario, although ratings aren't the be-all, end-all.

HOCKEY

Gee-Gees: Ottawa forward Dan McDonald, who joined the ECHL's Utah Grizzlies after the CIS season ended, had a four-goal game last Saturday ("the mortorboard trick") vs. the Alaska Aces. The former Kingston Frontenac (for 2½ seasons) has had a decent pro debut with 13 points (seven goals, six assists) in 16 games.

The plan is for McDonald to return to Ottawa, write his exams and rejoin Utah for the playoffs. (Please don't wonder how it is that athletes at other Ontario universities located in and around London, Ont., can be off working out for NFL teams during examination periods.)

Ravens: Former Carleton d-man Brodie Beard is reportedly committed to play at Nipissing University, the new expansion entry in the OUA, according to BayToday.ca.

(Cross-posted to cisblog.ca. Thanks to a commenter for the hook-up on Hinz; thanks to Gee-Gees coach Dave Leger for the McDonald note.)

CIS Corner: Ravens reload; Gaels get more cash

Notes on our teams of interest from The 613 ...

Carleton's 2009-10 basketball outlook and Queen's nearly doubling its athletics fee (as Andrew noted at Sporting Madness are topics du jour.

RAVENS

The Ottawa Citizen's excellent Wayne Kondro has a what's-next piece on the Carleton Ravens, who as you know, lose five-year standouts Aaron Doornekamp, Rob Saunders and Stu Turnbull to graduation. (Their impact is pretty much impossible to sum up in a sentence or two.)

It woudn't do to piggyback on Wayne's reporting and writing, since I'll try to have a take and not suck in the Ottawa Sun later this week. Here's some bullet points:

• Carleton has five rotation players back: Kevin McCleery in the post, forwards Kyle Smendziuk and Cole Hobin at the 3-4 spots, Elliot Thompson as the 2-guard and Mike Kenny running the point.
• Two HoopStars Canada Top 50 players from Kingston, 6-foot-8 centre/power forward Owen Klassen and 6-5 swingman Greg Faulkner, are also mentioned as possibilies. Klassen and Faulkner are the No. 2 power forward and No. 7 small forward, respectively.
  
  Oddly enough, like the Kingston trio, both are from the west-end schools in the Kingston high school league. Klassen attended Bayridge, Faulkner went to Holy Cross.
  

• At least two people who would know told me during the Final 8 that Carleton is likely to get twin guards Kyle and Scott Ring and forward Tyson Hinz (ranked No. 4 in Canada at his position), who led the St. Matthew's Tigers to a 45-1 season and the Ontario AAA title.
  
• Some of you probably noticed that Willy Manigat, who was a valuable seventh man on Ottawa's national semi-finalist team in 2006-07, was sitting on Carleton's bench during recent games; he has three years' eligibility remaining if he gets his schoolwork in order.
  
  Manigat averaged 5.1 points in 13 minutes per game for the '06-07 Gee-Gees and also led them in three-point shooting (.455).

GOLDEN GAELS

As Bucholtz noted, Queen's Athletics has raised its athletics fee to $251, making it the highest among Ontario University Athletics member institutions. Eleven other schools, according to Andrew's report, are likely going to seek an increase in the next two years

This has presumbably raised the KHD (Kinger High Dudgeon) alert level to four, since our own inimitable, irrepressible Tyler King has been a dissenting voice about the funding increase on this on his sports-related radio program. The crux of his argument seemed to be that this was less about doing better and more about maintaining the current standards, which have included scarcely few national championships since the last football Vanier Cup in 1992 and the women's soccer team winning the whole megillah back in '88.

The great part about being an alumnus is that you don't have to care; it's not your money, and hell yeah, it would be nice if Queen's got its act together. You can't take it on faith it's going to happen. At least someone in Kingston is in the range of doing whatever it takes to produce a winner, since it sure won't be the Frontenacs.

Related:
A momentous day
Ravens lose big three, but coach still likes chances (Wayne Kondro, Canwest News Service)

CIS Corner: Taking a bit of a bath at The Bank

This likely rates a post of its own:

Carleton's success on the court hasn't been matched by fan support.

Attendance for the three-day tournament was 73,126 -- including 15,852 combined for the two games yesterday. That wasn't as high as anticipated, said Carleton athletic director Jennifer Brenning, the tournament chairwoman.

"I'm a bit disappointed, but we're head-to-head with the 67's and the retirement of (Brian) Kilrea, so that would be a factor, and it's a beautiful day out," she said.

Brenning said the tournament lost money last year, and she just hoped to break even this year. Carleton has one more year of hosting the Final 8 before it moves back to Halifax for 2011 and 2012.

She didn't bid for those championships, and is debating whether she'll try to bring it back for 2013.

"They changed the funding structure, so the CIS holds over 60% of corporate advertising inventory and the host gets the balance. The concept is the host is to purely concentrate on ticket sales," she said.

Brenning's comment about corporate advertising inventory explains away the dearth of bids for some national championships; Atlantic University Sport basically was bidding against itself for the 2011 and '12 men's basketball tournament.

Any and all suggestions as to why ticket sales were down are welcome; it could be the novelty wore off, or maybe people thought Carleton would win. Also, maybe it's time to study how time is used; four hours dedicated to two consolation-side games on Saturday is one of those really ... really moments? It is understandable you don't want a team to travel from either coast to play one game, lose and be done, but an all-star game and a skills competition might be more of a crowd-pleaser.

Tell you what, the thing with university sports in Canada is people really are there for the game. Getting 8,000 tickets distributed, even in a city Ottawa's size, is nothing to sneeze at.

CIS Corner: Hats off to Carleton

A journo friend once said what she loved about her job was that every day, you start at zero.

That analogy, at least from afar, fits the Carleton Ravens to a T (as in Turnbull, Stuart, whose 22-point, seven-rebound effort in Sunday's 87-77 championship-game win over the UBC Thunderbirds sealed the Kingston area's sweep of the Final 8 most outstanding player awards, since Napanee's Matteke Hutzler was the MOP for the Simon Fraser women's team). The way Carleton pulled it off on Saturday night, when Turnbull hit the last-second game-winner to beat Western, naturally lent itself to speculation about an emotional letdown. Everyone remembered how Acadia took down Carleton on semi-final Saturday last March and then lost to Brock less than 24 hours later.

That's all it was, talk. Carleton seems to have an attitude that if what you did yesterday still seems big, then you cannot have done much today. Mark Masters from Streaming Sports Network Canada, who was on the beat when the Ravens had that famous win streak 4-5 years ago, recalled on the air yesterday how coach Dave Smart often downplayed it, pointing out that the school didn't count losses vs. NCAA Division 1 teams. There was a logic behind it; why count when everything resets to zero as soon as the game's over?

No one on the outside looking in can ever know for sure, but that indicates why Carleton's final two wins, over the second- and third-best teams in Canada, played out the way it did in the final weekend together for the Kingston trio of Turnbull, Rob Saunders and Aaron Doornekamp. It's convenient to say there was no way Carleton could lose after the white-knuckle ride vs. Western were spot-on, since it was such a perfect storyline. It has the accidental benefit of being right, since as Carleton has shown, they weren't going to get wrapped up in being part of an instant classic.

They played like they didn't have any laurels, so it didn't seem too worrisome when UBC was hitting shots from here and there and everywhere and staking itself to a 16-4 lead. Carleton was taking its time, figuring out UBC, waiting for the second half when they could plant the tracking device known as Rob Saunders inside 'Birds guard Chris Dyck's shirt (he scored only four of his team-high 21 points after the break with Saunders on him, and didn't make a basket in the second half until inside of the 1:20 mark). It would have been homerism writ large to say it on air, not to mention it had the potential to blow up in one's face, but when Carleton had UBC's lead down to a point at halftime, 37-36, it felt like the game was over. The Thunderbirds had lost their chance to build a lead while Turnbull and Doornekamp, a combined 2-of-10 in the first 20 minutes, were looking for their shots.

Sure enough, after the break, there they came, running off the first eight points to go ahead for good, with all eight rotation players contributing: The Kingston guys (Doornekamp ripped down three offensive rebounds in that period alone), the two starters from Ottawa, Kevin McCleery (15 points, eight rebounds; UBC didn't have an answer for him) and point guard Mike Kenny; and the bench brigade of Kyle Smendziuk, Cole Hobin and Elliot Thompson, who seemed to grow up right before everyone's eyes, although in reality all three had shown signs they could be counted on play major minutes (and, he added under his breath, with the officiating, they certainly had to).

It might have been a coincidence, but a lingering image is that when Carleton was celebrating on the floor, for a couple minutes Kyle Smendziuk had the CIS championship banner draped over his narrow shoulders like a cape. It seemed kind of symbolic, almost as if the older guys who'll be moving on had said, here, you wear this for a bit, but remember, next week you start at zero.

A couple more notes from the weekend:

• Carleton's seventh man, Elliot Thompson, was an exemplar of efficiency, scoring 11 points in just nine minutes on 3-for-5 shooting. He didn't look like a backup when he came in, and at 6-foot-4, can elevate for a shot from the perimeter. It was noticeable during the Western game that he was adept at running out to contest three-pointers without fouling. It will be fun to watch him next season.
• It will require going back to check for the exact quote, but CIS president Marg McGregor did address the issue of having two OUA teams meet in the quarter-finals. It all comes down to clarity; some people believe it's absolutely not allowed and some believe it's merely to be avoided if possible (it's the latter). She suggested there would be some direction that it not happen again.
  
• If you need someone to give you a push in order to be great, then UBC and Western held up their end of the bargain admirably. Both of those teams were capable.
• Any and all suggestions on how to better spend the four-hour block on Saturday taken up by two consolation side games are welcome. One suggestion: Hold an all-star game (most of the country's best players on non-tournament teams are in town for the all-Canadian awards) and a skills competition. Have a bronze-medal game on Sunday. Ottawa and Concordia played a very entertaining consolation game, but Calgary-Western for a bronze medal would have been off the hook.
  
• The Fates have a wicked sense of humour. Imagine if you had been told Carleton and Ottawa would make it to the final Sunday, only they wouldn't play each other.
  
  Dax Dessureault, who had 22 points and 13 rebounds in his Gee-Gees valedictory, an 83-76 conso-game win over Concordia, will be sorely missed, and so with the other five-year man, captain David Labentowicz.
  
  In terms of replacing them, Nemanja (Nemo) Baletic had a good second half of the season, while centre Louis Gauthier made a couple plays yesterday where it was easy to confuse him with Big Dax.
  
  
• It is among the site's sworn goals that by the time next season, Ottawa guard Warren Ward will be known as "Worldwide" Ward. He has that much potential.
• Some big ups have to go to Andrew Bucholtz, Jared Book and Rob Pettapiece for running the liveblogs all weekend at cisblog.ca.
  
  Rob, no word of a lie, got to Scotiabank Place about 30 minutes before the UBC-Calgary semi-final after travelling from Toronto and was up and running within about 15 minutes, since some clod of an editor didn't realize how rushed he'd been getting there. (Who was that guy?)
  
  
• Ernestown Secondary School turns 50 years old next year, but it pretty much was a mini-reunion by times. A quick roll call: On the premises by times were 1996 grad Adnan Virk working as The Score's sideline reporter, '97 grad Rob Smart coaching for Carleton, Aaron Doornekamp playing for the Ravens, Donnie Gibson playing for Ottawa, along with Aaron's siblings, Amy, Ben and Nate and cousin Mike Smart, a star on Carleton's '03-05 championship teams, out in support of their kin. All of them played on high school teams coached by Tom Turnbull, Stu's dad. It's worth mentioning now, since Aaron was the last one in the Eagles-to-Ravens pipeline that began with Rob and carried on with Mike, Ben and Jessica Smart.
  

Last but not least, thank you so much to readers who took time over the weekend to say some very nice things about OOLF and cisblog.ca.

(Photo by Rob Pettapiece)

Related:
Carleton wins sixth CIS basketball title in seven years (Wayne Kondro, Ottawa Citizen)
Ravens rule CIS roost again (Shane Ross, Sun Media)
Dax all, folks ... Dessureault goes out a winner with GGs
(Shane Ross, Sun Media)

CIS Final 8: Championship live blog

This one's for all the marbles! It's the national championship game, live from Scotiabank Place. The top-ranked Carleton Ravens are taking on the third-seeded UBC Thunderbirds. Join us in the live blog below!

CIS Corner: Stu's shot

Stu Turnbull rode the biggest 4.9 seconds of his basketball life like a skeleton horse through the gates of hell.

The Carleton Ravens' man of the match and Kingston native made a Will Ferrell reference following his buzzer-beater that vanquished the Western Mustangs, 66-65 last night. That means it is apropos to allude to the Amy Adams speech from Talladega Nights. He started it. He also ended it for Western, putting Carleton into today's championship game vs. the UBC Thunderbirds (4 p.m., The Score, SSN Canada).

Please know that as much as it was a shooter's shot, a fadeaway jumper from 12 feet over Western's Matt Curtis, it was a byproduct of Carleton's flinty Eastern Ontario toughness. The psychological aspect of facing Carleton has put more than one team over the cliff during Dave Smart's decade as their head coach, and Western, like Acadia 364 days earlier, practically had them dead to rights.

It goes against the grain in an age when we're all dollar-store psychologists to figure out what it is about The 613, outside of how well Carleton is coached, that has made it such a fecund ground for tough-as-nails basketball players. One way to look at it is that Carleton, more than any CIS team, including some which have more talent, embody the whole notion that sport has little to do with the concept of a game (thank you, Chuck Klosterman). They will not quit. Something was forged a long time ago, way before Smart arrived at Carleton, when Stu, Aaron Doornekamp and Rob Saunders were learning to play the game, getting schooled sometimes by their older siblings.

With the way the game unfolded, Carleton was certainly given outs. Western is damn good. The officiating, quite frankly, was not national semi-final quality, with the refs calling 49 fouls. Meantime, there were constant harbingers of last season, from foul trouble to a very long defender, Western's 6-foot-10 Colin Laforme, doing a good job vs. Aaron Doornekamp (16 points and eight rebounds, but on 4-of-15 shooting, near the 4-of-23 he had in that Acadia game).

Still, they responded, getting big buckets in the third quarter from Elliot Thompson and Cole Hobin coming off the bench. Despite having four starters limited, Smart managed to keep three in the game for the duration and his team shot 50% across the second 20 minutes after making only 27% in the opening half. That, by the way, makes a genius of Greg Layson, who said a while back over e-mail, "You heard it here first and now again: Western is the best team in the OUA but they will be outcoached by Smart."

On merit, Western could be playing today against UBC. They're tough, talented and well-coached and showed their resolve by twice fighting back from five-point deficits in the fourth quarter, on the wings on some sick three-pointers down the stretch from Alex Brzozowicz and graduating forward Bradley Smith which kept them in the hunt. One's heart can only go out to their point guard and coach, Curtis (who was in his final CIS game) and Ottawa-born Brad Campbell. They did everything right, even had close to textbook defence.

The sun would still come up today no matter what, but simply put, thinking of the people who are believers in how Carleton approaches basketball, the real stunner might have been if Turnbull hadn't had that shot go down. His reaction as it traced through the air was classic; he sort of half-turned toward the bench, as if teammates' reaction would give confirmation, then he just collapsed flat on his back. Personally, from SSN's broadcast position a few feet away, it was pretty hard to remain detached, thinking how as much as Turnbull made that shot for himself to put Carleton into today's final, it was for a lot of people in a very extended basketball family.

Rob Pettapiece, who was clutch in his own right last night, noted this over cisblog.ca, when Turnbull was waiting to do an on-court interview with Cabbie Richards from The Score, he actually had to rest against the scorer's table. It was if some energy had gone out of him when he hit that buzzer-beater, as well it should have. Someone who plays for Carleton and comes from Kingston need not be asked to leave it all on the floor, or to do it again in a little more than 16 hours against UBC and Chris Dyck.

Related:
Turnbull’s last-second jumper lifts Ravens into final (Wayne Kondro, Canwest News Service)
Ravens dodge Mustang rally; Turnbull hits game-winning shot at buzzer, giving Carleton chance at sixth CIS title in seven years (Shane Ross, Sun Media)
Gee-Gees moving for-Ward (Shane Ross, Sun Media)

CIS Final 8: Semifinal liveblog, Carleton vs. Western

After a great first game, it's an OUA Replay for the second game. Carleton, Western, live from Scotiabank Place. Join us below!

CIS Corner: Heading into semi-final Saturday

Thanks to everyone who came by Friday to help out Andrew Bucholtz, Rob Pettapiece and Jared Book with the live blogging from CIS Final 8 at Scotiabank Place on Friday, where Carleton advanced to semi-final Saturday while Ottawa was ousted by Western, with extreme prejudice.

Out of Left Field's sister site cisblog.ca set a single-day traffic record. There will be live blogs of the semis, UBC-Calgary and Western-Carleton, starting around 6 p.m. tonight. I'll join play-by-play man Mark Masters and sideline reporter Alison Sandor on the Streaming Sports Network Canada webcast at ssncanada.ca.

Anything blog-worthy will be on either of those two sites, so apologies if this ends up being a quiet weekend on this site for other matters. (What's up with Syracuse only playing one overtime tonight?)

Incidentally, Carleton's rout of St. Francis Xavier had an even stronger Kingston connection than usual. Stu Turnbull's father, area coaching legend Tom Turnbull, was interviewed during the game by The Score's Adnan Virk, one of his former students at Ernestown Secondary School. That was a sight-and-a-half to see.

Carleton - St. FX live blog

The final game of the day sees the top-seeded Carleton Ravens take on the wild-card St. Francis Xavier X-Men. Join the live blog below!