I might get kicked out of the university sports fraternity for the blasphemous suggestion I’m about to make, but here goes, nonetheless: the best intercollegiate basketball program in Toronto probably belongs to the Humber Hawks, a lowly college team.
The Hawks have beaten U of T three straight years in the Raptors Cup, including a 78-71 win in this year’s competition in their meeting at Seneca College during the December break in the OUA schedule. This year’s defeat was a particularly tough one to take for the Varsity Blues because they were in complete control of the game, only to let victory slip through their fingers.
The Blues played the game short-handed, with leading rebounder Jonathan Taweel out with an ankle injury and sharp-shooting guard Joseph Heale unavailable to play as well, but that didn’t stop U of T from dominating the first half. The Blues played swarming defence, using fast break opportunities to score easy buckets, and were rewarded with a 10-point lead at the half, 35-25, led by 16 points from Kenny Hilborn.
However, things would quickly turn sour for U of T. Starting guard Paul Zyla suffered a game-ending ankle injury just before half time and foul trouble did the Blues in as well, as their top two players, Kenny Hilborn and Tom Grochmal, both picked up their fourth foul within less than five minutes after the half time break, leaving mostly bench players to carry the load.
“We committed some stupid fouls, but I thought (the referees) called some real ticky tack fouls as well,” complained frustrated U of T coach Ken Olynyk after the loss.
“Tom Grochmal fouled out on a play he quit on and let the guy have the layup and the referee called the foul. That’s his fifth foul. That’s a terrible call, in my opinion.”
It was a game in which the Hawks never led for the first 32 minutes and 32 seconds, but once they took the lead they would never relinquish it, building it up to as much as 14 points with 2:30 to go, before settling for a seven-point win.
For Humber, which has played university competition regularly for many years now, their coach said this win was just another among many.
“There was a day when it might have been (bigger), but we’ve had good days against universities,” said Hawks head coach Mike Katz.
The winner of this season’s Raptors Cup, the unofficial city championship for college and university basketball, are the York Yeomen, who swept through their five Toronto counterparts, and are, most would agree, the GTA’s best for this year.
However, if you are evaluating programs on their success over a somewhat longer period of time, it is Humber who has been the city’s most consistent and decorated program for the last decade-and-a-half, having won five national college championships in the last 11 years, while no Toronto school has ever won the CIS championship.
Many people will argue that winning championships at the college level is an easy accomplishment compared to winning at the university level. In fact, basketball may be the one sport in which that is an unfair statement.
An inspection of Humber’s record shows that they hold an above .500 record overall against university competition under Katz over a period of time spanning more than a decade. While university players respect the improvements of their college counterparts, it still stings for them to lose to opponents from smaller, lesser known schools.
“It’s always disheartening to lose to a college team because you always feel somewhat superior,” said Grochmal, who felt the loss to Humber was more about U of T’s poor play than how well the Hawks played.
“If we’d have controlled the pace and played like we did in the first half, I see a victory by 15, easily.”
Of course, the record books will reflect that a different, all too familiar story, played out for the Blues, against an opponent that has in recent years had U of T’s number.
