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.

Campus Corner: New meaning to Mitchell bowl!

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

FOOTBALL

• A tip of the cap is due to Manotick's Scott Mitchell. The left tackle helped clear the way for the Rice Owls to pile up the points (38) and the yards (455) in their school-history-making win over Western Michigan last night.
  
  Rice more or less is a NCAA equivalent to Mount Allison in Canada. You could also draw parallels with Toronto, since it's a big engineering and sciences school, albeit one with less than 3,000 undergraduates. Last night gave the Owls' their first 10-win season in six decades and first bowl win since 1954. It is a big deal. The game's first touchdown came on an running play to Mitchell's side, by the way.
  
  
• The Score will air the GMAC Bowl on Tuesday, Jan. 6, where Ottawa native Tyler Holmes will start at left tackle for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane vs. Ball State. Those teams might outscore a few college basketball teams that night.
  
  Holmes' coach, Todd Graham, by the way, is the one who helped start the turnaround at Rice. The crazy connections never stop.
  
• In other Ottawa-area offensive tackle news (how hyper-local!) that can ripped off Rivals.com without actually paying for it, it's down to four teams for Barrhaven native Brander Craighead. Three are in the ACC and one's in the Big East. Kingston native Hunter Steward, all 6-foot-7, 300 lbs., of him, has had two formal offers.

HOOPS

• Gee-Gees: Ottawa ended up with the bronze medal at the Wesmen Classic, beating Alberta 78-75 in overtime yesterday afternoon in Winnipeg. Warren Ward, who is on anyone's list of the country's best freshmen, put up 18 points and nine rebounds.
  
  The Gee-Gees had two nip-tuck games, the other being the last-second 74-73 loss to Calgary on Tuesday, where they held the No. 4 team in Canada to 27 points in the first half.
  
  Robbie Sihota, who's as reliable a senior forward as there is in Canada West, hit the game-winning shot with 2.5 seconds left.
  
  JGB had a typical all-around night (17 points, nine rebounds, six rebounds) and played 39 of 40 minutes. Josh Wright had 16 points and three dimes in 23 minutes.
  
  (Apologies for not calling the University of Winnipeg to request boxscores from the tournament, especially when one of our writers is an alumnus!)
• Ravens: The No. 1 team in the country, as noted, plays Acadia Friday in its first game at the Rod Shoveller tourney in Halifax. The schedule is set up for Carleton to meet No. 3 St. Francis Xavier -- a Dave Smart-Steve Konchalski coaching matchup! -- in the final on Sunday.
  
  How about about Ashleigh Cleary on the Carleton women's team shooting 10-of-11, including a buzzer-beater to win the game, on Monday vs. New Brunswick?
• In NCAA women's hoops, Ottawa native Courtnay Pilypaitis helped her Vermont Catamounts play nationally ranked Florida tough on its home court Monday night. Pilypaitis had 20 points, six rebounds, five steals and five assists for Vermont, which lost just 85-76. Vermont is on a five-game skid, but that's still no mean feat for an America East team playing a SEC school on the road.

Please visit cisblog.ca when you get a chance.

Ottawa women's hoops stars has some WWLever-age

ESPN's women's college basketball writer Graham Hays has a survey piece up on the season. Guess which Ottawa player got a shout-out from the worldwide leader in sports:

"Courtnay Pilypaitis, Vermont: A 6-1 guard from Ontario with a Fat Lever game (sound like any ESPN analysts?), Pilypaitis averaged 6.9 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 1.6 steals and shot 40 percent from deep."

Nice.

Related:
Teams and players to watch as 2008-09 unfolds (Graham Hays, ESPN.com)

MORE SKILLS WITH THE PIL...

For Ottawa readers, the local paper in Burlington, Vt., ran a feature today on St. Peter grad Courtnay Pilypaitis and the season she's put together playing point guard for the Vermont Catamounts.

She led America East in scoring, was runner-up in assists and was fourth in rebounds for Vermont, which is the No. 2 seed headed into their quarter-final tomorrow at the America East conference championship. No word of a lie, the second this post went up came word that Pilypaitis has been named America East women's basketball player of the year.

Related:
Pilypaitis does it all (John A. Fantino, Burlington Free Press)

SKILLS WITH THE PIL...

A couple weeks yours truly profiled Ottawa's own Courtnay Pilypaitis, a point guard for the Vermont Catamounts, for the Sun. Well, last night she had the first triple-double (18 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists) in the program's history to lead Vermont to a win over Hartford, the top team in their conference.

It's like a reverse of the S.I. cover jinx or something. Beating Hartford, doesn't that call for a little Brass Bonanza?

IT'S A LIMITED KIND OF CLAIRVOYANCE

If only this kind of prescience extended to dating, employment and what bus to take to work... this week, the spotlight for the Ottawa Sun writing duties was on Courtnay Pilypaitis, a St. Peter grad who's having a great sophomore season in NCAA D-1 women's basketball with the Vermont Catamounts.

So what happens today? Pilypaitis tied a school record with 40 points.

Related:

Pilypaitis makes her point (Ottawa Sun, Jan. 30)

HOOPS: LADY BALLERS ON GUARD FOR THEE

A pair of point guards from the capital, Orleans' Courtnay Pilypaitis and Ottawa's Kadie Riverin, will both be in Team Canada's backcourt for the FIBA U21 World Championship for Women which begins next week in Moscow. (The roster was named today.)

Riverin, a Glebe Collegiate alumna, is entering her senior year of U.S. college hoops at Rice University in Houston, where she's been the starting point guard for the past two seasons and has shown a bit of a knack for lighting it up in big games. (She had 23 points, twice her average, in Rice's season-ending loss, and the year before, put up a career-high 25 in the last game of the season.)

Pilypaitis, out of St. Peter's, was a freshman all-everything last winter in her first season at the University of Vermont. She was one of just four freshmen in NCAA Division 1 women's basketball to led her team in scoring. The team also includes forward Krysten Boogaard, the 6-foot-3 little sister of Minnesota Wild enforcer Derek Boogaard.

On another Canada Basketball note, Mark Wacyk of cishoops.ca is reporting that Ottawa's Garry Gallimore, Gatineau's J.P. Morin (who plays for the Laval Rouge et Or) and U of O Gee-Gees guard Josh Gibson-Bascombe each look to have a strong chance to play for Canada at the World University Games later this summer in Thailand.

CAPITAL'S TOP CAT...

Orleans' Courtnay Pilypaitis, who was named her conference's rookie of the year Thursday, led the Vermont Catamounts closer to a berth in the NCAA women's basketball tournament with a 70-57 win over Maine. The St. Peter's alumna had her second-best point total of the year, 23, while adding seven steals and seven assists.

Vermont plays Maryland-Baltimore County in an American East conference semi-final today at 5 p.m.; anyone in the Ottawa area who's really into this can listen live at sportsjuice.com.

Pilypaitis is one of just four freshmen in NCAA D-1 women's hoops to led her team in scoring this season, and is the first to do so at Vermont since 1985. She was her team's second-leading rebounder from the guard spot and was among the conference leaders in most of the major stats. Another Canadian player on the Catamounts, Waterloo's May Kotsopoulos, was also an America East all-rookie pick.

THIS AND THAT, INCLUDING HOT CURLING ACTION

Could have had a full post, but no, someone had to stay up late playing Madden, then sleep in:

• Michael Irvin got the boot from ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown.

• Call me crazy, but the Scotts (sorry, Scott-ies) Tournament of Hearts this week, the thought has occurred the most appealing sportswomen of all may be female curlers. Discuss among yourselves until there's a full blog post.

• Our man James Mirtle has some thoughts posted on Searching For Bobby Orr, Stephen Brunt's best-seller. Still amazing after all these years that in 1960, in the pre-NHL draft era, that the Bruins were able to sign a hot prospect in the heart of Leafs territory. That was the last time the Leafs missed the boat on a good player, of course.

• Accolades to Orleans' Courtnay Pilypaitis, the St. Peter alumna who's having a stellar freshman basketball season with the Vermont Catamount. Pilypaitis is the 16-9 Catamounts' leading scorer, following by fellow Ontarian May Kotsopoulos of Waterloo. They are the only freshman duo in NCAA D-1 women's basketball who lead their team in scoring.

GOT A (CIS) BASKETBALL JONES

Mark Wacyk's CIS Hoops Blog is becoming a daily stop, even though the Canadian university basketball regular season is on an exam/holiday break. Today Mark had a link to an article on a local basketballer, Orleans' Courtnay Pilypaitis, a St. Peter grad who's thriving in her freshman year of NCAA D-1 ball at the University of Vermont -- second on the team in scoring (behind fellow Canadian freshman May Kotsopoulos) and first in rebounding.

Just another name to keep on file: Pil-ah-pie-tis.

I am deliberating over featuring more CIS content -- maybe even a spin-off CIS blog -- come January. There was a good feedback with football in the fall. Let me know what you think.