After a dark season, gym lights turn on once again this weekend in Canada West university basketball.
The University of Victoria Vikes men’s and women’s squads take part in the reopening with road games tonight against the Trinity Western Spartans at the Langley Events Centre and the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds on Saturday at War Memorial Gym in Vancouver.
“It’s been close to two years so there might be rust for everybody and it might be messy basketball early on, but everybody is excited and ready to go,” said UVic men’s head coach Craig Beaucamp.
The Vikes men go into the regular season having swept their three exhibition games, two against Fraser Valley and one against Simon Fraser, and are ranked No. 3 among the 17 Canada West schools in the pre-season coaches’ poll behind the Alberta Golden Bears and Saskatchewan Huskies.
Veteran point-guard Scott Kellum from Issaquah, Washington, a human Swiss army knife who can do it all in the backcourt, is the team leader in his fifth season. He will mentor sophomore Diego Maffia, out of Oak Bay, a pure shooting guard whose style puts people in mind of former Calgary Dinos great and Canadian Olympian King Karl Tilleman. Third-year guard Aaron Tesfagiorgis, who provided enticing glimpses in his first two seasons, will provide backcourt support off the bench.
Ethan Boag is a rookie stretch-forward out of Claremont Secondary and one of the last cuts on the Canadian team that won silver at the 2021 FIBA U-19 world championship. Boag can attack inside or outside in the manner of fellow Victorian and former Canada West MVP, Canadian national team player and Spanish league pro Connor Morgan, out of UBC.
Three other intriguing rookies are six-foot-11 forward Sergio Pereira, out of Shawnigan Lake School, six-foot-seven wing Elias Ralph from Calgary and guard Christopher Heggelund from Oslo, who comes with experience from clubs in Norway, Denmark and Germany.
Also up front are the true-and-tested veteran forward trio of Dominick Oliveri, Jason Scully and Matthew Ellis, who will be key, along with Kellum, as fifth- and fourth-year players.
“This is a five-year league, now with a sixth year added due to the pandemic, and is an older league,” Beaucamp said of the value of the veterans.
“It’s a men’s league, with the veterans being between 23 and 25 years old, and you can’t replace man strength.”
The UVic Vikes women’s team went 2-3 in the pre-season with a victory over Fraser Valley and losses to Mount Royal and Saskatchewan while splitting with Alberta.
The team is led by fifth-year forward Aleah Ashlee, out of Mark Isfeld Secondary in Comox, and fourth-year guard Ashlyn Day from Kelowna and fifth-year shooting-guard Calli McMillan, out of Claremont.
The rookie to watch is 6-foot-4 forward Abigail Becker, out of Ballenas Secondary in Parksville, while sophomore Tana Pankratz, from Abbotsford, is expected to continue her development from a promising rookie season.
Look for a team that plays tenacious, swarming defence. That was head coach Carrie Watts’ forte in a national team career that took her to the FIBA world championships and Pan Am Games in Canadian colours.
The Vikes are ranked No. 7 among the 17 Canada West teams in the pre-season coaches’ poll. But don’t read too much into that, warned Watts, because with the 2020 season wiped out by the pandemic, nobody really knows what everybody has and there will be surprises.
“There will be a lot of weird scores and swings early on,” she said.
Because of those uncertainties, all women’s and men’s teams will make the playoffs in Canada West, with the champions to be crowned through the post-season tournaments.
“COVID has made everything weird,” Watts said.
“Every team making the playoffs takes away some of the pressure of the regular season, but there is still urgency because you are playing for the best possible seeding.”
FOUL SHOTS: Former Thunderbirds star Watts will return Saturday to UBC, where she was assistant coach to Olympian and Thunderbirds head coach Deb Huband since 2007. Overlooked for the UBC head coach position when Huband retired following the last season, Watts was hired by UVic. “It will be strange to be on the other bench and visitor’s dressing room, but there’s no more to it than that. I’m a Vike now,” Watts said.
