REGULAR SEASON
| Cape Breton | 16-4 | 25-9 | Tim McGarrigle | |||||
| Saint Mary’s | 13-7 | 13-10 | Ross Quackenbush | |||||
| U.P.E.I. | 13-7 | 20-9 | George Morrison | |||||
| Dalhousie | 12-8 | Bev Greenlaw | ||||||
| Acadia | 9-11 | Dave Nutbrown | ||||||
| St. FX | 8-12 | 15-17 | Steve Konchalski | |||||
| New Brunswick | 6-14 | Clint Hamilton | ||||||
| Memorial | 3-17 | 5-19 | Glenn Taylor | |||||
Playoff non-qualifiers:
Memorial Seahawks: John Devereaux, Peter Benoite, Sean Fryer, Marc Woods, Shane Harte, Mike Woods, Scott Noftall, Bernard Leonard, Leon Peddle, Darren Payne, coach Glenn Taylor
New Brunswick Varsity Reds: Gord McNeilly, Dan Graf, Jon Stevenson, Marc Aube, Jeff Tegart, Brian Scales, Stanleigh Mitchell, Andrew Mackay, Clint Simmons, Michael Krause, Joe O’Brien, Bryon Elliott, coach Clint Hamilton
In the quarterfinals, St. FX nipped Dalhousie 91-87 in overtime. “It feels good because we lost a lot of close ones to these guys,” said X-Men point guard Brian lee. “It gave us momentum because we thought we outplayed them and it pissed us off. All week, we were saying, ‘let’s get these guys back’.” St. FX led by six with 1:44 to play in regulation but treys by Marcus Jamieson and Jeff Mayo forced overtime. Mayo had a chance to win it in regulation for Dalhousie but his layup was waved off on a controversial traveling call. Jamieson opened the overtime with a trey but Blair White notched a three-point play and Brian Lee hit several free throws as St. FX rallied. White finished with 19. Guy Mbongo added 18. Jeff Mayo led the Tigers with 28. Shawn Plancke added 18. The Tigers (coached by Bev Greenlaw) also included Kyle Atkinson, Kevin Bellamy, Christian Currie, Peter Hunt, Reginald Oblitey, Steve Harris, Shawn Mantley and David Reynolds.
In the other quarterfinal, UPEI edged Acadia 85-80 as Raham Dixon scored 38. UPEI had led 39-34 at the half but the Axemen rallied back to take an 11-point lead midway through the second half. “You can’t count Acadia out,” Dixon noted. “They do that every year. If you don’t keep them down, they’re going to come back and get you.” The Panthers rallied with full court pressure. “What we wanted to do was the get the ball out of the guards’ hands and have the ball in the big men’s hands and see if we could get a couple of steals of them,” said Dixon. “So, it worked out pretty well.” Curtis Robinson added 28 for the Panthers, while Dennis Smith had 12 points, 8 boards and 2 blocks. Kevin Pick led Acadia with 23. Adam Griffin added 16, including 13 in the second half. Pick said the Axemen couldn’t stop Dixon. “When players get on a roll, such as Dixon did, it’s really tough to stop a scorer when he gets in a groove.” The Axemen (coached by Dave Nutbrown, assistant Chuck Goreham, manager Paul Seaborn, therapist Dan Arsenault, therapist Greg Caldwell) also included Michael Bishop, Christopher Cain, Adam Gladwin, Keith Johnson, Jerome Carter, Colin Ring, Jeremy Smyth, Tom Henry, Adam Miller, Leon Beaton, Geoff Kott, Gerald Muzelaar, Duncan White, Kevin Lee and Scott Rawding.
In the semis, the UPEI Panthers crushed Saint Mary’s 89-67. The Huskies started slowly, missing 13 of their first 14, while PEI opened with a 20-5 run. SMU rallied to within 41-31 at the half and trimmed the margin to seven early in the second half. But Darrell Glenn’s four-point play (a trey and free throw) ignited a 17-0 run that gave the Panthers a 65-41 lead midway through the second half. Saint Mary’s shot 20-69 (.290) from the floor. PEI forward Dennis Smith said the Panthers felt no pressure. “I guess we were the underdog and we had nothing to lose, so we came out and let it all hang out. The Panthers held high scoring Will Njoku to just 21. Coach George Morrison said “we played to try to make him put the ball on the floor and bump him off the cuts and rotate several different people on him.” Richard Sullivan added 11 for Saint Mary’s, on 2-18 from the field. “We were disappointed in a couple of the shots that Sullivan got early but he didn’t make them,” Morrison noted. “So, we got a bit lucky I guess.” Huskies coach Ross Quackenbush had no explanation for the Huskies shooting woes. ‘I don’t know what to say. They didn’t have a very good day shooting the basketball, so I don’t know whether it’s something I did, or didn’t do, in terms of preparing them mentally to play the game. I didn’t do anything different when we won the 20 games that we won this year.” Glenn led UPEI with 16. Curtis Robinson and Raham Dixon each added 15, Smith 13 and Peter Lawlor 13. The Panthers shot 30-62 from the field and 10-22 from the arc. The Huskies (coached by Ross Quackenbush) included Wade Doucette, Noah Cantor, Jonathon Waye, Jeff Piers, Jeff Baltzer, Cyril Smith, Chris Lawrence, Derek Hurdle, Brian Luinstra, Mike Dixon, Bill Seaward, Dwayne Hemmings and Jason Medford.
In the other semi, Cape Breton dumped St. Francis Xavier 81-74. St. FX led 42-37 at the half but the Capers opened the second half with a 22-6 to take control. ‘It’s nice to get that monkey off your back,” said Capers coach Tim McGarrigle of the school’s first playoff win. “I really though we upped our intensity in the second half and played at a playoff level that you need to succeed in this league.” Guard Troy Jones noted that the X-Men “played like champions. They weren’t going to let anybody beat team.” With forward Guy Mbongo sidelined because of a knee strain suffered in the quarterfinals, St. FX was unable to match the Capers on the boards. Cape Breton out-rebounded St. FX 50-30, while nabbing 17 on the offensive glass. “With Guy, or without Guy, we have to go strong to the boards. But it does make a difference without Guy,” said Jones. St. FX Steve Konchalski said his troops fought hard. “If we would have just made our free throws down the end, I don’t know if we would have won, but it would have made it a little bit closer.” St. FX shot 14-24 from the line, including 3-10 in the final 10 minutes. Troy Jones led Cape Breton with 17 points and 14 boards. Michael Dailey scored 17 and nabbed 10 boards. Rawle Philadelphia notched 14. Brian Lee paced St. FX with 18. Mark Corrigan scored 18 and nabbed 7 boards. The X-Men (coached by Konchalski, assisted by Joe Odhiambo and Ron MacDonald, managed by Ross Thompson and trained by Donald Simms) also included Jason Hirtle, Merrick Palmer, Sean McLean, Michael Clarke, Andrew Tyler, Marc MacKay, Blair White, Sean Clarke, Mark Corrigan, Kelsey Stewart and Guy Mbongo.
In the final, Cape Breton defeated UPEI 79-75 to earn their first AUAA title in just their fourth season in the league. “Playoff basketball isn’t pretty sometimes and that game wasn’t pretty,” said Cape Breton coach Tim McGarrigle. “It was kind of like a mackerel in the moonlight: shiny one moment, smelly the next.” Tournament MVP Michael Dailey was unfazed. “It feels unbelievable. I don’t know how to describe it. We worked four years, 400 practices, 120 games and we got it, finally.” The Capers had something to prove despite having captured the regular season crown, said guard John Ryan. “I thought that’s what we had to do. The regular season is only so much. Last year, we came first and we didn’t get the respect but I don’t think we deserved it because we had never won the big one.” The Panthers had rallied from a 47-34 halftime deficit to take a three-point lead with six minutes to play. But Ryan, who scored 20, said the senior Capers “never lost of our composure. We knew they were going to make the run and we just hung tough.” Dailey added 18 points. “PEI is a great team. They did a great job to get to the final. We just toughed it out on defence. They came back on us and we hit our free throws down the stretch.” After Curtis Robinson hit a free throw to tie the score at 68 with three minutes to play, Cape Breton hit 9-11 from the line over the final 2:54. Troy Jones scored 17 and grabbed 11 boards. Raham Dixon led the Panthers with 24. “We knew what we had to do at halftime. We’ve come back from bigger deficits than that before,” said Panthers forward Peter Lawlor. “We just had to play good defence and run the offence through to get a good shot inside.” Robinson added 16, Peter Lawlor 13 and Dennis Smith 12.
After the season, reigning conference coach of the year Tim McGarrigle, who’d steered the Capers to the conference title after just four years at the helm, bailed for Dalhousie, calling it a tough decision. In 10 years with the Capers, Tim McGarrigle an AUAA record of 76-28. His career record was 196-115. He twice won AUAA coach of the year. “These opportunities only come around so many times. I didn’t want to be left saying I wish I had done that. I wish I had done this.” He is replaced the Capers helm by Greg Jockims, an assistant with the Victoria Vikings the previous two years, Jockims was an assistant with the Saskatchewan Huskies from 1989-92.
The runner-up Prince Edward Island Panthers: Raham Dixon; Peter Lawlor; Curtis Robinson; Dennis Smith; Greg Lucas; Kevin Mitchell; Doug Newson; Craig Walker; Kevin Hansen; D Jason Kielly; J. Pete Richard; coach George Morrison
The champion Cape Breton Capers: John Ryan; Terry Wright; Troy Jones; Michael Dailey; Rawle Philadelphia; Pat Lahey; Sheldon Shaw; Mike Wall; Shaun Robinson; Jude Lamorre; Aubrey Cathcart; Johnathan Meades; John Tait; coach Tim McGarrigle