| (1) | Toronto | 89 | ||||||
| (8) | Laval | 69 | Toronto | 71 | ||||
| (4) | Victoria | 60 | McGill | 66 | Toronto | 77 | ||
| (5) | McGill | 68 | ||||||
| —–MANITOBA | ||||||||
| (2) | Manitoba | 72 | ||||||
| (7) | Dalhousie | 67 | Manitoba | 93 | Manitoba | 81 | ||
| (3) | Western | 58 | Western | 78 | ||||
| (6) | Laurentian | 45 |
Prior to the tourney, both Calgary and McMaster had expressed outrage at Laurentian being chosen a wildcard. Calgary had defeated three conference champs during their 24-6 campaign. McMaster had thrashed Laurentian 70-57 in the opening round of the Ontario championships, where the Voyageurs had finished fifth. “I wonder if it sets a precedent that a fifth-place team in their conference gets the wild card over a conference finalist,” said Dinnies coach Shawnee Harle. “My guess is that this is precedent setting, somebody finishing as low as fifth getting chosen as wildcard.” Laurentian coach Peter Ennis said the Voyageurs played in a tough loop and had a strong out-of-conference schedule deserving of the squad’s 18th straight nationals’ selection. The Voyageurs had finished 23-5 overall, with a 10-2 record in the OUA east.
In the quarterfinals, the top-seeded Toronto Varsity Blues crushed the 8th-seeded host Laval Rouge et Or 89-69.
The 5th-seeded McGill Martlets became the first Quebec team to win a game on the championship side of the draw in more than a decade (Concordia in 1985) when they upset the 4th-seeded Victoria Vikings 68-60 as Vicky Tessier scored 21 and freshman Alison Schafer notched 13. The Martlets rallied from a 15-point first half deficit to run their unbeaten streak to 19 games. “This is a great feeling,” Tessier, the fourth-year senior from Chateauguay who’d been selected the league’s MVP for the fourth consecutive season, told the Montreal Gazette. “We’re really happy to have been able to do what we did tonight but we won’t be satisfied until we go as far as we can. There is still a lot of work to do.” Tessier had a torrid second half, scoring 13 points, hitting 5-6 from the line and grabbing 8 boards. Victoria had taken a 15-2 lead and extended it to 21-6 after five minutes of play. But the Martlets promptly slowed the game to absolute crawl, hoping to slow the taller Vikes transition game. They chipped away at the lead and rallied to within 31-28 at the half when point guard Jennifer Stacey hit a bucket at the buzzer. “The biggest surprise for us was their quickness,” said McGill coach Lisen Moore. “We knew they had quickness in their backcourt but the quickness of their forwards especially No. 14 (Lisa Brown) really surprised us. We figured we had the scoop on most of them but we didn’t know some intangibles and it was those early intangibles and the physical abilities that shocked us.” Schafer, the conference’s rookie of the year from Dollard des Ormeaux, hit a pair of free throws to knot the score at 36 and then forward Anne Gildenhuys gave the Martlets their first lead with a bucket. Schafer had matched up against all-Canadian point guard Lisa Koop all night before fouling out with minute to play and forcing a half dozen turnovers. Lisa Koop led Victoria with 22. “I didn’t feel like a rookie out there,” said Schafer. “I have really felt like one at all this season because of the support I’ve been given by my teammates.” After Koop knotted the score at 56 with just over five minutes to play, McGill took command as Jennifer Stacey hit a trey and Tessier scored seven unanswered points.
The 2nd-seeded Manitoba Bisons defeated the 7th-seeded Dalhousie Tigers 72-67 with Terri-Lee Johannesson scoring 25 points. Bisons shot only 37.8% from field 28-74. Johannesson hit for 10-27. Ex-Montrealer Coleen Dufresne saw her troops overcome a 38-35 halftime deficit. The Tigers, who slowed the tempo to a crawl and tried to pounded the ball inside to Carolyn Wares, increased their lead to eight early in the second half but them came down the floor on four successive trips and were stopped by the Bisons. “We just couldn’t seem to put them away when we were up eight,” said Dalhousie coach Carolyn Savoy. “I think the girls are disappointed. We felt the game was ours to win or ours to lose. Manitoba got a lot of second shots. They out-rebounded us. We felt pretty good about the game plan. We thought we executed our game plan very well.” Carolyn Wares led Dalhousie with 29 points and 18 boards. Jackie Flieger added 14.
In the last quarterfinal, the 3rd-seeded Western Ontario Mustangs dumped the 6th-seeded Laurentian Voyageurs 58-45. Michele Vesprini notched 21 for the Mustangs, who hit .422 from the floor and led 32-20 at the half. Sarah Kieffer led Laurentian with 17 points. The Voyageurs shot just .281 from the floor. Rookie all-star Karen Vos was 0-10 and scoreless.
In the semis, top-seeded Toronto handed the 5th-seeded McGill Martlets their first loss in 20 games by rallying from an 11-point second half deficit to prevail 71-66. McGill built a 38-31 lead at the half on the interior play of Vicky Tessier and the perimeter shooting of Josee Deloretto and Debby Morse. Point guard Jennifer Stacey drilled a trey early in the second half as McGill extended their lead to 41-33. But trailing 48-37 with 14:44 to play, Toronto exploded for a 16-4 run to take a one-point lead and then built it to 65-60 with 2:40 on the clock as Elizabeth Hart and Rachel De-Amoah hit a series of critical buckets. Hart finished with 22 points and 11 boards. Justine Ellison scored 17, Laurel Johnson 11 and Dei-Amoah 10. “We knew about Hart but she really stepped up her game,” McGill coach Lisen Moore told the Montreal Gazette. “Dei-Amoah also hurt us but Hart, with her play outside and rebounding really hurt us. What we didn’t get, she got.” Moore added that “we felt we were the better team. Everybody know that if we had executed and did everything that we possibly could do, we would feel good about ourselves and be (outside the locker room) right now. Unfortunately, we don’t feel good about ourselves and we’re upset, very upset.” Deloretto and Anne Gildenhuys each scored 16 to pace the Martlets. Tessier added 15 and grabbed 11 boards. “It came down to our execution not being very good down the stretch,” said Moore. “We wanted the ball in the hands of our All-Canadian and let her get to the foul line and that was the hardest thing for us not to have happened. Overall, we played some great defence. Someone like Alison Schafer gave us everything, but in a game like this, it’s the others that you have to shut down and we didn’t always shut down their people.”
In the other semi, Manitoba took a 34-point lead at the half and coasted to an easy 93-78 win over Western Ontario. Senior forward Victoria Neufeld paced the Bisons with 21 points on 9-13 from the field. Marjorie Kelly added 18 and rookie guard Anne Smith 14. The Bisons avenged a 93-77 loss to the Mustangs over the Christmas holidays. Michele Vesprini led the Mustangs with 22.
In the bronze medal match, the McGill Martlets defeated the Western Mustangs 75-72 in overtime. The Martlets rallied from a 13-point deficit with eight minutes to play to pull out the win. Rookie Alison Schafer hit a pair of free throws with 13 seconds remain to give the Martlets a 65-62 lead. But Jennifer Haylor, who scored 23, hit a bucket at the buzzer to force overtime. Vicky Tessier led McGill with 26 points on 14-17 from the line, 8 boards and four assists.
In the final, Manitoba defeated Toronto 81-77 in overtime. The Bisons had beaten Toronto twice, by 10- and 14-points during pre-season games, but the final was much closer in a scoring battle between two of the best players in the country, first-team all-Canadians Justine Ellison of Toronto and Terri-Lee Johannesson of Manitoba. Toronto opened the first half with a 10-0 run as Ellison dominated the paint against Manitoba’s man-to-man defence. But Manitoba chipped away and with Ellison on the bench with two fouls, ripped off an 11-2 run, capped by a Marjorie Kelly runout, to take a 36-35 lead at the half despite hitting a dreary 2-12 from the line. The Bisons switching to a collapsing zone in an attempt to contain Ellison in the second half and their full-court press rattled the Blues as Manitoba took an eight-point lead. But guard Stacy Yuel was hobbled with an ankle injury and Johannesson was forced to the bench with her fourth foul with seven minutes to play. Ellison, the national player of the year, rallied Toronto back to a 68-67 lead with a minute to play. Manitoba’s Victoria Neufeld tied it with a free throw with 11.5 seconds to play but missed the second which would have given the Bisons the win. Ellison hit a shot just after the buzzer as the game went into overtime. Toronto took a four-point lead in the extra session before Neufeld rallied Manitoba back with two key buckets. With 30 seconds to play, Marjorie Kelly hit a driving jumper that rolled in off the glass to give Manitoba a 79-77 lead. An Ellison miss at the other end soon led to a pair of Johannesson free throws that iced it for the Bisons as they won their second national championship under Dufresne. The 5-7 Johannesson, a point guard, scored 30 in the final despite sitting out most of the second half in foul trouble. Victoria Neufeld added 22 and 13 board for the Bisons. Ellison, who was born in Philadelphia but moved to Canada when she was two, retained her American citizenship despite growing up in Dundas, Ontario. She scored 41 in the final, hitting 17 of 23 shots. She scored 91 in the Blues three tourney contest. “While she said she will never give up her American citizenship, Ellison is working to obtain dual citizenship so that she can try out for the Canadian national team.” Dufresne noted that “this is definitely sweeter than last year.” The coach, whose mother died in October, added that “we won, but we had help from above – my mom.” Johannesson told the Montreal Gazette that Ellison “is a phenomenal player. It’s tough there can’t be two winners. I feel for her. I can’t say enough about here. She’s a great person and a great player but our team worked really hard to play as a team and that’s what won it for us. …It’s amazing. To be the champions of the CIAU, it’s been a goal since two years. We’ve had a couple of ups and downs but we came through big time with a team effort.” Johannesson told The Varsity that “player of the game aside, championships at CIAUs was a goal since two years ago. Last year, we made the final. We came through today and it was a real team effort.”
The all-tourney team featured: MVP Terri-Lee Johannesson (Manitoba); Victoria Neufeld (Manitoba); Justine Ellison (Toronto); Vicky Tessier (McGill); Lisa Koop (Victoria); Carolyn Wares (Dalhousie)
The bronze medalist McGill Martlets: Vicky Tessier; Anne Gildenhuys; Alison Schafer; Lesley Stevenson; Jennifer Stacey; Josee Deloretto; Debby Morse; Jennifer de Leeuw; Ingrid Marchand; coach Lisen Moore
The silver medalist Toronto Varsity Blues: Justine Ellison; Rachel Dei-Amoah; Kate Vrancart; Laurel Johnson; Yvonne Spiczynski; Elizabeth Hart; Karen Bottineau; Maja Babic; Stephanie Splitter; Naomi Dove; Samantha Burrows; Alicia Brand; Enid Headley; coach Michele Belanger; assistant Cathy Casey; assistant Mary Ann Kowal; therapist Chuch Mooney; doctor D. Richards; manager Steve Paget
The champion Manitoba Bisons: Terri-Lee Johannesson; Victoria Neufeld; Marjorie Kelly; Anne Smith; Glenda Clark; Gabi Macra; Jackie Burgoyne; Rachel Durksen; Treena Moran; Connie Ehlmann; Stacy Yuel; Kyla Koskie; Jana Taylor; coach Coleen Dufresne; assistant Mike Hickey; assistant Carol Ploen-Hosegood; athletic director Walt McKee