It’s only fitting that the Canada West basketball season opens on Halloween. The Murphy Burnatowski era in University of Victoria Vikes men’s hoops begins tonight in conference with the new head coach having inherited a built-in winner that should spook opponents.
The three-time defending Canada West-champion Vikes easily topped the conference coaches’ pre-season poll with 15 first-place votes heading into the league opener in Langley against the Trinity Western Spartans.
Only two other teams received first-place votes with the UBC Thunderbirds and University of Winnipeg Wesmen getting one vote each of the 17 cast by the conference coaches. The Vikes are also likely to head the first U Sports national top-10 poll when it is released.
But Burnatowski doesn’t want to be known as Mr. October, but Mr. March: “Rankings don’t matter this time of year. What does matter is practising hard and competing hard, and building good habits, for those tough games in March.”
That’s where the Vikes have faltered the past three seasons, going highly ranked into the U Sports national championship tournament each time, but failing to win the first national championship for UVic since 1997 when led by eventual 2000 Sydney Olympian Eric Hinrichsen a generation ago.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact every team in Canada West has the games against UVic circled and will be up for them this season.
“We go in as three-time conference champions but there are going to be no easy games. We are going to get every team’s best shot. We have to be ready or we are going to get punched first,” said Burnatowski, whose Vikes went 7-1 in the preseason, with the only loss coming against NCAA Div. 1 Rhode Island.
Burnatowski is the sixth head coach in UVic men’s basketball history and replaces 21-season Vikes head coach Craig Beaucamp, who departed over the summer to become lead assistant coach for the NCAA Div. 1 University of the Pacific Tigers in the West Coast Conference. This is the 33-year-old Burnatowski’s first head coaching assignment after a stint as Dalhousie University assistant coach in Nova Scotia.
As a player, the six-foot-seven forward came up in the junior national team program with the likes of eventual NBA players Cory Joseph, Tristan Thompson and 2024 Paris Olympian Kelly Olynyk and won a bronze medal with Canada at the 2008 U-18 FIBA Americas. The native of Waterloo, Ont., played NCAA Div. 1 for two seasons each with the University of Maine Black Bears and Colgate University before playing pro basketball in Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Cyprus, Vietnam and Thailand.
“We are going to play with intensity and will pick up full court [on defence] and push the ball [on offence] and we are going to share the ball,” said Burnatowski, responding to a question about his coaching philosophy.
But special players deserve special consideration. That is what the Vikes’ spectacular fifth-year shooting-guard and defending U Sports national MVP Diego Maffia will continue to get as he will have the green light to put the ball up from anywhere on the floor. The Oak Bay graduate is the two-time U Sports national scoring champion and has already played two seasons of pro in the CEBL under a similar system to that in soccer with the CPL that allows top U Sports athletes to play professionally in the summer months without losing their university eligibility.
“Diego is a great talent and can [shoot] when he wants but we have standards as a team,” said Burnatowski.
Maffia has been soaking up his new coach’s insights on what it takes to make it to the next level.
The mercurial Maffia will have only one season under Burnatowski but is all ears: “Any change requires adjustment but the group has responded well [to Burnatowski] and he is going to develop a lot of players here in his time.”
The UVic Vikes women’s team, meanwhile, opens tonight at Trinity Western as the seventh-ranked team among the 17 in Canada West in the coaches’ pre-season poll. The University of Saskatchewan Huskies received 15 first-place votes and UBC and the Alberta Pandas one vote each.
The Vikes enter the conference season tonight carrying with them the momentum from last season’s playoff run to the Canada West Final Four: “We picked up a lot of good experience at the end of last season and four of our five starters are returning so we are feeling good heading into this season,” said UVic head coach and former national-teamer Carrie Watts.
UVic is led by its inside game as fourth-year post and conference all-star Abigail Becker from Parksville led the team in scoring last season with able back-up provided by fellow-post player Mimi Sigue.
UVic, however, has had a rough go in the preseason at 1-5 largely due to a series of injuries that are slowly healing.
The Vikes teams’ home openers in Canada West are Saturday on Ken and Kathy Shields Court in CARSA gym against the University of Fraser Valley Cascades with the women’s game at 5 p.m. and men’s at 7 p.m.
