The 2015-16 VIU Mariners are unbeaten. Now they’ll find out if they’re unbeatable.
Vancouver Island University’s men’s basketball team tips off Thursday (March 17) at the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association championships in Fort McMurray, Alta.
The M’s go into nationals as the No. 1 seed, for good reason, after going a perfect 21-0 in PacWest play and then following up by winning a provincial championship. Will opponents be intimidated?
“I’m sure some teams will get scared, [but] I know if I was on the opposite side of a team that’s never lost all season, I’m going to want to take them out and I’m going to play that much harder…” said John Thompson, VIU guard. “So it can work both ways, I guess.”
Matt Kuzminski, coach of the Mariners men, said he doesn’t think his team’s record will matter much to opponents.
“You don’t know the other teams, the other teams don’t know you. There’s very little interconference play,” he said. “So the rankings, they set the first game up; other than that, they probably don’t mean a ton.”
While VIU’s perfect record to this point won’t be a factor, the team’s experiences winning games will matter. The Mariners have won a lot of games, they’ve won in different ways and they know what it takes to win.
“We talk about the process, doing your job and the score takes care of itself…” Kuzminski said. “There’s so much of basketball that’s out of your control that you’ve just got to make sure you’re really good at doing the things you can control.”
VIU’s game is about “stops and scores,” said forward Josh Ross, and so that’s what the team will look for at nationals.
“We’ve just got to be under control with a little bit of aggressiveness like we like to play,” he said. “Just play our game.”
The first action for the VIU men at nationals comes against the host Keyano Huskies. The Mariners have scouted their first opponent, but beyond that, they’ll generally take the tournament as it comes.
“[We want to] force our own game plan, stick to what we do. We have an identity and we try to keep to it…” Thompson said. “We’re not going to play their game, we’re going to make them play our game and I think we’ll be fine if we do that.”
Nationals are a bigger stage with higher stakes, but when it comes down to it, it’s the same game that the Mariners have been playing – and winning – all season long.
“It’s nothing new. It’s nothing magical,” Kuzminski said. “It’s just being very good at executing the things that we’ve tried to emphasize all year.”
They expect opponents to be talented and athletic and worthy of making it to the elite eight of Canadian college basketball. The favourites are focused, and are about to find out how much further they can take this undefeated season.
“We’re really excited,” Thompson said. “We get some new competition, something we haven’t seen before, something we’ve been waiting for.”
GAME ON … Thursday’s game tips off at 7 p.m. Pacific Time and will be webcast live at www.ccaa.ca.
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