The 2009 Christmas wish list from the men’s Varsity Blues basketball team had only one item on it: a trip to the CIS National Championships. “I want a championship,” said guard/forward Pat Sewell. “There are no individual goals for me. I just want to win.”
After taking some time off for the holidays, the 5-3 Blues get back to work this week rested and ready to start the second and more difficult portion of their schedule. “We’ve been a little injury plagued, so resting was key,” said point guard Nick Magalas. “During exams and the break you kind of take yourself away from [basketball] so that you can come back to it with a little more zest, a little more passion.”
The Blues have it tough when they resume the season, where six of their first eight games are on the road. Their only home stand in that stretch comes against Ottawa and Carleton, who are both ahead of Toronto in the OUA East standings. “When you have games on the road you have to stick together as a team,” said forward Nick Snow. “You need to focus on the game plan, get good shots, rebound well, hit your foul shots, and take advantage of what the other team gives you. You get some hostile crowds, and it’s fun, but you’re 12 guys against a couple thousand in some places. So you have to stick together and keep the energy high on the road when you don’t have that crowd there to help you out.”
After the road trip, the Blues close out the season with five of their last six games at home, and by then they expect to be in a very good playoff position. “Our league is tough top to bottom,” said assistant coach Mike DeGiorgio. “You get an easy game here and there with RMC, but everybody else is capable of winning in their gym. Realistically, we’re hoping to catch up to Carleton for one, and also overtake Ottawa in the standings and hopefully secure a bye in the first round of the playoffs.”
The team understands the importance of this section of the schedule, especially in terms of how it will translate into their playoff success. “We’ve got to be more disciplined in the second half of the season,” said Sewell. “A lot of mistakes we’ve made in the first half shouldn’t be happening in the second half. We should be more cohesive and more aware of what’s going on, minimizing mistakes and pulling out wins.”
“Our goal by the end is to be a top-three team in the country,” added shooting guard Rob Paris. “It’s a very difficult task, but we can realistically get 12 wins [during the next 14 games] and come out with 17 wins overall at the very least.”
The team has marked Jan. 15 and 16 on their calendars—the home stand against Ottawa and Carleton. “You always look forward to the home games,” said coach DeGiorgio. “There’s going to be a big crowd in the gym, and everybody knows that weekend is going to be a big weekend for us, so I’m looking forward more to the home games just because of the atmosphere that our gym creates.” Forward Drazen Glisic agrees with his coach. “The home stand will be fun because of the crowd,” he said. “But they’re both big games for us, and it’s also great to go into their gyms and it’ll be even greater to get a couple of wins on their court.”
The other 10 games, however, are not to be taken lightly. “We beat Ottawa in the preseason in overtime [on the road], which was a big game for us,” stated Snow. “We know we can beat Ottawa, and we can beat Carleton if we play well. But we also have those 10 other games; we lost to Lakehead and Waterloo and some people think we shouldn’t have lost those games. We looked at the tapes and we saw that we beat ourselves. So we not only have to play well against Ottawa and Carleton, we have to play well all 14 games we have remaining, plus the playoffs. There’s so much parity in the league right now that anybody can beat anybody.”
“How we grow as a team over the 14 games is going to be a testament to how well we do in the playoffs,” added coach De Giorgio. “Teams are going to start to scout, especially the second time through, you’re going to have a good handle on what every team does, so being able to execute down the stretch of those games is really a barometer of where the team actually is compared to their win-loss record.”
At the end of the season, Magalas sums up what will be on everyone’s minds come playoff time. “I want to win that game that has plagued us for the last four years, [that OUA quarterfinal game against Ottawa] to see who plays Carleton in the OUA Championships. That game has been my nemesis since I’ve been at U of T.”
“If we take care of our mistakes,” continued Sewell, “there’s no reason why we shouldn’t come out on top.”
As confident as the team is, they will need some help from the fans. “I think we have one of the best gyms in the conference,” said coach DeGiorgio. “We have good atmosphere, and if we reach out to the colleges and student groups to come out to the games and let them know what is happening in our gym, it would definitely give our guys a boost.”
