When Craig Beaucamp departed Ring Road over the summer after 21 seasons as the head coach of the University of Victoria Vikes men’s basketball team, he took Canada West all-star and Vikes standout Elias Ralph with him to his new NCAA Div. 1 gig as assistant coach at the University of the Pacific.
Ralph is among the four former U Sports players having transferred to Pacific under Beaucamp and new Pacific head coach Dave Smart, a Canadian who amassed a head-spinning 591-48 record in guiding the Carleton Ravens to 13 U Sports national championships. (Beaucamp and Smart became close friends while coaching with the Canadian U-18 national team). The Pacific four are among nine U Sports transfers this season to NCAA Div. 1 teams. UVic, however, hasn’t missed a beat despite the loss of Ralph and is the top-ranked team in U Sports heading into Canada West conference games against the UNBC Timberwolves tonight and Saturday night on Ken and Kathy Shields Court in CARSA gymnasium.
“Transfers to NCAA are always a concern but if we’re doing our job here, we can continue to recruit talent and show players they will develop in U Sports and continue to improve,” said new Vikes head coach Murphy Burnatowski, himself a former NCAA Div. 1 player for the University of Maine Black Bears and Colgate.
“And the CEBL is a big factor for top players,” added the former Canadian U-18 international, who played pro basketball in Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Cyprus, Vietnam and Thailand.
Burnatowski was referring to the Canadian pro basketball CEBL, which under a similar system to that in soccer with the CPL, allows top U Sports athletes to play professionally in the summer months without losing their university eligibility. UVic players Diego Maffia and Sam Maillet have taken advantage to play in the CEBL. The NCAA does not allow players who have played pro basketball.
“The CEBL is a high level of basketball with players going from there to the big leagues of Europe,” noted Burnatowski.
“Diego [Maffia] and Sam [Maillet] were playing against guys who have played in the NBA.”
Back now in U Sports, fifth-year veteran Maffia out of Oak Bay and Dalhousie-transfer Maillet go into the weekend with the Vikes 2-0 in Canada West and 9-1 overall, with the only loss to NCAA Div. 1 Rhode Island. UNBC is 0-2 in Canada West but the Vikes need to be wary, said Burnatowski: “[Timberwolves] are big, strong, athletic and physical. And they are hungry. They haven’t been blown out and are on the cusp of figuring it out. There would be no better way of righting the ship than beating the No. 1 team in the country on its home floor.”
The UVic and UNBC women’s teams, meanwhile, are both 1-1 in conference. Abigail Becker from Parksville leads UVic in scoring with 13 points per game with fellow post-player Mimi Sigue averaging 11.5 and sophomore Makena Anderson, out of SMUS and last season’s Canada West rookie of the year, 11 points.
Viktoriia Filatova of UNBC is fourth in Canada West scoring with a 19.5 points-per-game average while Sveta Boykova has twice represented Russia in the World University Games and is a former Canada West rebounds leader. Both are from the Moscow to Prince George pipeline. It has been facilitated by 12-season UNBC head coach and former Soviet Union national team player Sergey Shchepotkin, who played 15 seasons of pro basketball in Russia and Lebanon, and mentored four future WNBA players as coach of Dynamo Moscow.
“Sergey has done a great job of recruiting the Europeans. We have to take care of their Russian players, who are very good, one on the perimeter [Filatova] and once inside [Boykova],” said UVic head coach Carrie Watts, a former Canadian national team player.
The UVic-UNBC men’s games are 8 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday in CARSA. The women’s games are 6 p.m. Friday and 5 p.m. Saturday.
It is the final homestand for the UVic teams before Christmas.
The Vikes close out the first portion of the season on the road next weekend against the UBC Thunderbirds at War Memorial Gym in Vancouver and Nov. 22-23 in Abbotsford against the Fraser Valley Cascades. The Vikes will next return to CARSA for games against the Trinity Western Spartans on Jan. 10-11.
UVIC SOCCER : The Ottawa Gee Gees blanked the UVic Vikes 5-0 Thursday in the U Sports national women’s soccer quarter-finals at Halifax. The Vikes play Trinity Western in an all-Canada West consolation-side game today.
