Nineteen players, six coaches and a three-part game plan.
The Carleton University Ravens men’s basketball team gathered three hours before their five o’clock game against the University of Bishop’s Gaiters in a small meeting room on the second floor of the Westin Calgary Hotel.
The game plan was to defend without fouling, rebound the basketball on both offence and defence and score in transition.
“I expected to win the game,” said coach Taffe Charles, recalling what he’d told his team as they forged their path to victory.
In the hours that followed, the team would hop in five separate vans that’d bring them face-to-face with the Gaiters, their final rival of the season.
The Ravens would go down in history as holders of the18th national championship title, defeating the Gaiters 78-75 at the March 8 U Sports gold-medal game.
But the journey leading up to the win wasn’t without its pressures and challenges, according to Charles.
The Ravens suffered through multiple losses and injuries, with some even playing the game while observing Ramadan.
Getting back on the ‘winning train’
At the Feb. 6 annual Capital Hoops Classic games, the University of Ottawa’s Gee-Gees defeated the Ravens in a painful 73-52 final.
“When you have big stages like this, there’s a lot of hype that’s being generated from that,” Charles said. “The reality is, when you lose, it takes a little bit out of you each and every time.”
But losing is a “necessary evil,” according to this coach.
“It happens … but our program sees losing as unacceptable. But when you lose, you want to get back on that winning train.”
Overcoming those challenges and learning from those mistakes was a priority this season, Charles said.
At Capital Hoops Classic, the team played without two of its top players, Aubrey Dorey-Havens and Emanuel Milon, which the coach said can help explain the results.
Dorey-Havens said he’d caught a bad flu at the time. The point guard for the Ravens men’s basketball team said he also sprained an ankle in the quarter-finals at nationals. “I think it’s a bone bruise, but it kind of got worse in the semifinals.”
On the day of the championship game, he tried not to think about the injury.
“It took a long time to warm up, and try to get my ankle to feel as OK as possible,” he said, adding that staying as calm as possible was a priority for the rest of his time on the court.
He added that after hearing Milon, who’d suffered an ankle injury in the semis, wasn’t going to play the game, he knew that everyone else would have to step up.
Dorey-Havens and Milon weren’t the only Ravens dealing with injuries at the nationals.
‘Bringing MJ home’
Perhaps a theme for the coaching staff at this year’s U Sports nationals was to get one of their seasoned players to play at a national level in his hometown.
“Our goal was to get MJ (Okado) to the nationals,” Charles said. “He had never played a game in Alberta. He’s been with our team for five years, he’s played I would say more than 130 to 140 games and he’s never played in his hometown.”
“‘Get MJ home‘ — that was our theme for playoffs,” Charles said.
“Him being able to play in front of his family and friends was something that was a great honour for him,” he added. “Unfortunately getting hurt and not being able to be with us right until the end is really frustrating for him.”
Okado, a shooting guard for the Ravens, said he was able to play three quarters of the first game in Calgary, but by the end of the fourth quarter his knee “fully” gave out on him.
Playing their ‘best basketball yet’
Charles wasn’t convinced the team had reached its full potential by the time nationals came around. After losses in both Capital Hoops Classic and OUAs, he said he thought there was hope.
“We did what we needed to do when we qualified for nationals, but we had not played to our ability until the nationals,” the coach said.
“I thought we always had hope that there was still something else there, that we could reach another level.”
Dorey-Havens said the Ravens regularly re-watch footage of their previous games to analyze where they might have gone wrong.
These “film sessions” are in many ways a form of full accountability, according to Charles, who emphasized the importance of self-analysis.
For Charles, understanding and analyzing why you lost is the key to success. “I think that’s probably the biggest thing.”
“Being honest and saying, ‘Why did we lose? Did we not put enough effort in? Were we not prepared? Were they better than us?’ You got to find out why you lost and ask honest questions about why you didn’t succeed,” Charles said.
The coach gave credit to the team for being able to look internally after a loss. “We don’t talk about the referees, we don’t talk about the situation. We don’t like to make excuses; there’s reasons why we hate excuses.”
Though the over-critical assessment of one’s performance can sometimes be negative, Dorey-Havens said it’s necessary and can help if approached with the right mindset.
“Part of it is that you’re always striving for perfection knowing that you can never get perfection,” he said. “By striving for it, you’re getting as close as possible to playing perfect games.”
5′ oclock games during Ramandan
Watching back the clips from his team’s victorious game, Dorey-Havens noted two of the senders on the team — Louth-Mohamed Coulibaly and Immen Suzzama — who “were just on the same page” with him.
“They were setting big screens, allowing me to get open … so if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have been able to get as open as well as I had.” Dorey-Havens played a big part in leading the team towards its 18th title by scoring a career-high 35 points, including nine three-pointers, in the final.
Charles noted Coulibaly’s perseverance during the intense U Sports final matchup came while observing Ramadan.
“He’s playing the games at five o’clock and he hasn’t eaten since six in the morning,” Charles said. “And being able to overcome that all three games. I think we take it for granted sometimes.
“To not be able to drink or not be able to eat before a game and fuel yourself and try and play a game at a high level, I would never try it.”
