By Eli Shupak
They took two different routes, but the Alberta Golden Bears have once again found the road to glory.
Having entered the CIAU elite eight tournament as a wildcard entry and the fourth seed, the on-again off-again Golden Bears turned it up a notch by winning their second consecutive national basketball championship with an 84-66 victory over the Concordia Stingers on Sunday afternoon at the Halifax Metro Centre.
The Bears’ size and strength on the offensive boards proved to be too much for the seventh-seeded Stingers, who faded as the game wore on.
“We dictated what was going to go on in the basketball game,” said Alberta guard Greg Badger, who was named player of the game. “We knew that if we played our own game, there was no doubt that we would win.”
“Last year was really exciting when we won the nationals. The fact that we won two in a row shows that we’re a very mentally tough team. It is so much tougher to win back-to-back.”
Alberta jumped out to an early 15-point lead behind the hot shooting of Badger and tournament MVP Greg DeVries. The Stingers then went on a 15-0 run to even the score at 29-29 with three minutes to go in the half. Following a time-out, the Bears re-gained their composure and opened up a five point lead before going to the dressing room at the break, up 37-32.
The second half started with an 11-2 Alberta run, putting the game pretty well out of reach for the Quebec champions. They never got closer than eight points the rest of the way.
“It was a long hard road for us,” said DeVries, who led the Bears with 22 points. “A lot of people doubted us, but we’re bringing it home again.”
Alberta defeated Guelph and the hometown favourite, Cape Breton Capers, on their road to the finals, while Concordia knocked off Victoria and U of T on their way to the championship game. With U of T’s loss on Saturday, the OUTAA East lost out on its chance to be represented in a national championship game for the first time in the 33-year history of the tournament.
The top-ranked Brandon Bobcats were upset in the opening round by the eight seed from Cape Breton, who were the beneficiary of a home-town crowd dressed in orange and waving “Cape Fear” signs. Victoria hammered Guelph 77-58 in the consolation final. The Gryphons were hampered by the flu bug throughout the tournament. It hit seven players, including four of their starters.
The three-day tournament attracted 25,385 fans to the Halifax Metro Centre, marking the fifth straight year that attendance has surpassed 25,000.
The tournament all-star team included Concordia’s Jean-Pierre Reimer and Maxime Bouchard, Rawle Philadelphia of Cape Breton, Alberta’s Murray Cunningham and CIAU Rookie of the Year, Eric Hinrichsen from Victoria.
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