By Callum Fraser
The Carleton Ravens men’s basketball team arrived home from the Mar. 17-20 Canadian Interuniversity Sport Final-8 tournament with their 12th national crown from the past 14 years.
For graduating co-captain Gavin Resch, it was his fifth in five years.
“I feel like it might’ve been the hardest to win on paper,” signals the Ottawa native. “We had a lot of new pieces and we had a bunch of guys in new roles, but at the end of the day, it comes down to how you come together as a team, and this year was just like any other year.”
Carleton started the year without head coach Dave Smart – on sabbatical this season, with his nephew Rob taking over – and the dominant Scrubb brothers, Thomas and Philip. This season, Resch was in a leadership role for the first time.
“I don’t feel like it was a massive jump; more of a transition, if anything,” indicates Resch, who slowly took the lead along with fellow captain Guillaume Payen Boucard. “The main difference that I felt was that I would have to play better. That’s just kind of a different pressure than I’m used to because we had so much talent on the team previously and so many veteran guys that if I didn’t have the best game, it wouldn’t have an impact as much as this year.”
The 6-foot-2 guard threw dagger after dagger into the University of Calgary’s title hopes in the championship game, scoring all 18 of his points on three-pointers in his final game as a Raven.
It was the perfect finish to a university basketball career that first took root with the Gloucester Wolverines club and the St. Matthew Tigers, with whom he won an OFSAA high school provincial title in his Grade 11 season.
Similar to his experience at Carleton, Resch wasn’t even a starter in his second-to-last year on the powerhouse team that included past Raven CIS MVP Tyson Hinz.
“At the end of the day,” Resch smiles, “my story turned out pretty well.”
Blue-chip Gee-Gee showed ’em
Another Ottawa native also wrapped up his CIS basketball career with the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees, who bowed out in the national quarter-final round with an 87-83 loss to Dalhousie.
“I’m not going to say we’re not happy getting to nationals,” says Vikas Gill, who earned a national silver medal behind Carleton last year. “But when you get to this stage in this program, it’s kind of championship or bust every year.”
For Gill to have become a key member of one of the country’s best university basketball teams stands as an unlikely outcome for a player who drew almost no interest from scouts while in high school.
Gill says local coaches played a big part in making it possible. While in Grade 11 at Sacred Heart Catholic High School, Ottawa basketball guru Tony House picked up the whistle and clipboard, and began coaching the team.
“Tony was great,” underlines Gill, 23. “He put us in all the toughest tournaments and he kept putting us in a position to succeed and believed we could beat these guys.”
Under House, the team would do more than just win a city championship in their final year.
“At one point, we were (nationally) ranked 4th, which is pretty cool for a small school in Stittsville,” recalls Gill, who also credits House for getting him on the path to university ball. “I hadn’t gotten a single look from any universities and (Tony) told me I was a good enough player to play, so he emailed about six coaches for me.”
But none of the schools saw a fit for a teenager who had all the height in the world at 6-foot-7, but lacked mass at 170 pounds. Luckily for Gill, his fortune changed when the Gee-Gees appointed a new head coach.
“Coach Jimmy (James Derouin) got the job that year and he saw me play two games,” Gill recounts. “One where I scored six points, and the other I had, like, 18, and right after that he offered me a scholarship.”
After the Gee-Gees’ offer, suddenly others took an interest in Gill. But he had made up his mind.
“Coach Jimmy believed in me the first time he saw me play,” says the forward who averaged over 20 minutes per game this season. “So even if other schools did talk to me afterwards, which they did, I just knew coach Jimmy was the guy I wanted to play for.”
This season, the guy no one wanted started all 19 of his regular season games for the team that was ranked #1 in the country for much of the year.
“I don’t dwell on it, but I hope the other coaches, the ones we emailed, regret it,” Gill indicates. “Because I feel like I had a pretty good five years.”
MVP award stays local
Following four years of Ravens honourees with Tyson Hinz and Philip Scrubb, the Gee-Gees now have back-to-back winners of the Mike Moser Memorial Trophy. Mike L’Africain was selected as this season’s CIS men’s basketball’s outstanding player a year after Johnny Berhanemeskel received the award.