| (1) | Brandon | 85 | ||||||
| (8) | Concordia | 73 | Brandon | 85 | ||||
| (4) | Western | 78 | Toronto | 73 | Brandon | 74 | ||
| (5) | Toronto | 89 | —–BRANDON | |||||
| (3) | U.P.E.I. | 78 | ||||||
| (6) | Regina | 86 | Regina | 67 | Victoria | 73 | ||
| (2) | Victoria | 83 | Victoria | 86 | ||||
| (7) | Acadia | 63 |
In the quarterfinals, the 6th-seeded wildcard Regina Cougars (23-14 on the season) knocked off the 3rd-seeded UPEI Panthers 86-78 on the strength of a 31-point performance from all-Canadian forward Chris Biegler. Regina took a 47-43 lead at the half as Robert Andrist drilled a series of perimeter jumpers and 6-2 Richard Cohee neutralized Panthers all-Canadian Peter Gordon in the paint. In the second half, Chris Biegler caught fire, scoring 22 as the Cougars stunned U.P.E.I., while dominating the boards. Biegler hit 12-23 from the floor and 7-10 from the line, while grabbing 9 boards. Robert Andrist added 18 points on 4-10 from the floor, 2-6 from the arc, 4-4 from the line and 12 boards. Jeff Christiansen added 15 on 2-5 from the arc and 7-7 from the line, while Brian Livingston scored 14 on 4-4 from the floor, 1-2 from the arc and 3-3 from the line. Richard Cohee scored 4 while grabbing 8 boards. Kevin Koster and Mark Gottselig each scored 2, while Bill Knudson and Roland Biegler were scoreless. The Cougars shot 25-57 from the floor, 5-13 from the arc and 21-24 from the line, while garnering 34 boards. Mark Roberts paced U.P.E.I. with 24 on 8-14 from the floor, 6-6 from the arc and 4 boards. Curtis Brown added 23 on 5-12 from the floor and 5-7 from the line. Peter Gordon scored 18 on 5-18 from the floor, 5-5 from the line and 2 boards. Smith scored 5 on 2-10 from the floor. Dunn notched 4, Wright 3, Wood 2 and Lynch 0. The Panthers shot 23-62 from the floor, 5-14 from the arc and 17-20 from the line, while garnering a mere 19 boards. A disappointed Brown said “this is my last year and I thought we were going to do it.”
The 5th-seeded (29-7) Toronto Varsity Blues defeated the 4th-seeded Western Mustangs 89-78. The Mustangs had twice the Blues during the year including a 98-93 overtime decision in the OUAA final. The Blues trailing by two at the half 39-37 and by 10 in the second half with 10 minutes to go, in some foul trouble, but forwards Mark Harvey, Rob Wilson and Linas Balaisis led a smothering defence that held the Mustangs to only 13 points through the remainder of the contest. Harvey scored 14 of his 11 points in the second half and Wilson, who’d sat out most of the contest with three fouls, added 15. Reserve Balaisis added 11 and grabbed 5 rebounds. Jamie Green led the Mustangs with 23 and all-Canadian John Stiefelmeyer, the nation’s leading scorer averaging 25.9 per game, added 23. “The loss last week may have been the best thing for us. We had won 16 straight and it brought us back to earth a little bit. Plus, in put the pressure on Western as the favorite and they may have felt it down the stretch,” said Blues coach Gib Chapman. The win was Toronto’s first in three tries against Western all season. “If you can’t get up for a team after you’ve played them six days earlier, you can’t get excited about your wife,” said Blues guard Nick Saul, who scored 24. The Blues trailed for most of the affair and were behind by six with eight minutes to play. But they’d moved ahead by three with just three minutes to go and iced it at the line. Rob Wilson, who scored 15 for the Blues, said “I’m proud to be a part of this. It’s good to be a part of this team, and there’s a capital T on team.” Western had led by 10 in the second half. “We were playing too methodically,” Blues’ coach Gib Chapman admitted. “There was no spark, no momentum. We made adjustments on defence and decided to see if we could move the ball inside.” Blues started gradually chipping away at Mustangs’ lead and with five minutes left, had tied at 73-73. Wilson, who got in foul trouble early and came back into the game with six minutes to play, and scored 11 in about three minutes, moving Blues into a lead they never relinquished. Saul made four free throws to clinch the win in the final minutes. “If you’re going to win, you’re going to have to really make your foul shots,” Chapman said. “Any team that makes their foul shooting will win down the stretch.” The Blue outscored Mustangs 21-11 from the line. Mustangs’ big man, John Stiefelmeyer, who led the league in scoring with an average of 25.9 points per game, said the two games were very similar – except for one thing – his team staged the winning comeback last week. The 6-foot-6 forward was definitely off his game, scoring a sub- par 13 points in “one of the worst games I’ve ever played.” James Green had 23 points for the Mustangs. Blues’ 6-9 Mark (The Magic Marker) Harvey, scored 22 points and had seven rebounds before fouling out. Guard, and court leader, Merv Busby had 11 points, seven rebounds.
The 2nd-seeded Vic Vikings thrashed 7th-seeded wildcard Acadia on the strength of 16-point performances by Geoff McKay and Spencer McKay. Acadia was led by All-Canadian forward Grant McDonald’s 20 points. Victoria led 34-32 at the half. The tourney was the last for coach Ken Shields, who assumed the helm of the national team the following summer. Tom Johnson and Jerry Divocky each added 10 for Victoria, Kevin Ottewell 8, Maurice Basso 6, Dale Olson 4, Rick Mesich 4, Colin Brousson 4, Wade Louikes 3 and Kevin Harrington 2, while Darryn Lansdell was scoreless. Charles Ikejiani added 16 and Cliff (Clive?) Anderson 13 for Acadia, Wayne Taylor 7, Ted Byrne 3, Chris Mesher 2 and Peter Baldauf 2, while Sean Tidd, Eric James, Danny Steele, Duncan White and John Sowerby were scoreless.
In the last quarterfinal, the top-seeded Brandon (28-6 on the season) defeated the 8th-seeded Concordia Stingers 85-73. The Bobcats trailed the eight-ranked Concordia Stingers by 36-28 late in the first half and did not put the game out reach until late the second half. David Dominique and Joey Vickery each scored 18 while CIAU player of year Patrick Jebbison was shut out in the first half, scoring all of his 15 points in the second half. Nick Arvanitis and Dino Perrin scored 21 and 20 points, respectively, for the Stingers. The Bobcats were playing without three reserves, Finbar Strachan, Roman Huk and Wayne Pelly, who in the early morning hours had been charged with disorderly conduct after a fight outside of a Halifax nightclub and were disqualified from further play and sent home by CIAU officials for having violated the CIAU code of ethics. All pled guilty to charges of causing a disturbance. A charge of assaulting a police officer laid against Strachan was dropped by the crown. The trio were given absolute discharges by provincial court judge Hughes Randall, who said they’d suffered for their actions and “would no doubt suffer more.” The fight broke out outside Rosa’s Cantina, a block from the Metro Center, when the players were asked to leave for shouting profanities. A bouncer apparently hit Strachan in the face with the bar stool, causing a broken jaw. Concordia assistant coach John Dore later quipped that the wrong three players had been dropped from the Bobcat line-up. Concordia starting guards Allan Cox and Michael Cohee were a dismal 2-17 and 1-10, respectively, from the floor. The Stingers went to a zone from the start, hoping to force Brandon to the perimeter. They did but weren’t able to put points on the boards themselves at critical moments. “We did everything we had to. But when two of your starters combine to shoot 3-of-27, you’re not going to win.” Brandon rallied in the second half after shooting to a zone, forcing Concordia to the perimeter. “We had a mental lapse against their zone. It was only for a couple of minutes,” Stinger Nick Arvanitis, who scored 21 and grabbed 10 boards, told the Montreal Gazette. Dino Perrin added 20 points. Jebbison noted that the Bobcats first half “was probably the worst I’ve ever played. I wasn’t moving, just standing around. They really went inside on us a lot. We came out sluggish.” But in the second half, the squad put their teammates “behind us,” he added. Concordia coach Doug Daigneault said “we felt we were going to beat them. It was ours to win.”
In the semis, Victoria outmuscled Regina 86-67. The Cougars led 22-16 early but the Vikings rallied back to take a 36-34 lead at the half on a buzzer-beating three-pointer by guard Tom Johnson. The Vikings dominated the paint, while Johnson kept nailing treys as Victoria took command in the second half, extending its lead to as many as 15 before coasting to the win. Johnson led Victoria with 20 points on 4-5 from the arc, 3-10 from the floor and 2-3 from the line. Olsen scored 15 on 7-17 from the floor and 10 boards. Divoky notched 10 on 5-13 from the floor and 8 boards. Maurice Basso scored 8 on 6-7 from the line and 5 boards. Colin Brousson scored 8 on 3-5 from the floor and 5 boards. Spencer McKay scored 5 on 2-4 from the floor and 5 boards. Wade Loukes scored 5, Rick Mesich 2, Kevin Ottewell 2, while grabbing 6 boards, and Kevin Harrington 1, while Darryn Lansdell was scoreless. The Vikings shot 27-42 from the floor, 4-7 from the arc and 20-29 from the line, while ripping down 48 boards. Chris Biegler paced Regina with 15 points on 5-10 from the floor, 5-5 from the line and 5 boards. Jeff Christiansen added 14 on 2-5 from the arc and 4-7 from the line. Robert Andrist scored 12 on 6-11 from the floor and 4 boards. Brian Livingston notched 9 on 7-10 from the line and 3 boards. Richard Cohee scored 6 on 2-9 from the floor and 5 boards. Roland Biegler scored 5, Bill Knudsen 5, Mark Gottselig 2 and Kevin Koster 2, while Dean Lato was scoreless. Regina shot 21-54 from the floor, 2-12 from the arc and 21-29 from the line, while nabbing 26 boards. “Running worked for us tonight,” Tom Johnson told the Montreal Gazette. Victoria coach Ken Shields noted that “Tom’s shot selection is generally pretty good, although sometimes I like him to put up the three-pointer a little more. … And sometimes a little less. But he doesn’t give us a spark when we need it.” Regina opened an eight-point lead before allowing Victoria to come back and go ahead by two, 36-34 at the half. “The turning point for us was the last 20 seconds of the first half,” said Regina coach Ken Murray, who was selected coach of the year. “We gave up five points in the final seconds and that broke our back. It deflated us. We went in at halftime down and it really had an effect on us. We just never recovered.”
In the other semi, the Brandon Bobcats defeated the Toronto Varsity Blues 85-73 before a crowd of 3,000 at the Halifax Metro Centre. The Bobcats rallied from a slow start but ran away from the Blues, who tired down the stretch. David Dominique paced Brandon with 22. Patrick Jebbison added 21 and Joey Vickery 18, all the second half. Brandon led 44-41 at the half. “We’ve played two games now and really haven’t played up to our expectations,” 6-7 guard Dominique, from New Iberia, Louisiana, told the Montreal Gazette. “We’re a very explosive team normally.” Nick Saul paced Toronto with 24, including a five from beyond the arc. “I just stuck within the offence,” he said. “I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing all year, hiding behind the three-point (line) and doing my thing. But they caught on to it.” Toronto was down by three points at halftime, and until then, had played evenly with the Bobcats. But travelling problems, foul trouble and inaccurate shooting by the Blues in the second enabled Brandon to open up a substantial lead. “They’re a good team and they take it to you every time,” said Saul. “We got a bit tense and things just weren’t going our way. The travelling calls (five within seven Toronto possessions) were bizarre. I don’t know what brought that on. I guess it was their tough defence.” In the second half, Toronto was 1 for 15 on the inside. Big man Mark Harvey, who had 15 points in the first half, managed just two in the second. Harvey was 0 for 6 on the inside, and Rob Wilson went 1 for 9 in the final 20 minutes, and had only nine points for the game, well below his 14.5 average. But despite the rather dismal second-half statistics, Toronto coach Gib Chapman didn’t have one bad thing to say about his team’s performance. “We’ve been saying all year long we had a pretty young team. We’re inexperienced. When you put a team like ours in an arena with the two-time defending champions, it’s great experience for the future. All the players will sit down tomorrow and watch the final game, and know that they can be there next year. It’s great motivation for the future.” Blues coach Gibb Chapman told the Varsity that “we were trying to get the ball inside. We travelled four or five in a row.” Both Blues big men, Harvey and Wilson, were a combined 1-15 inside.
The final played before 4500 fans and the difference was 5-9 rail-thin guard Joey Vickery, who scored 20 points, including 5-9 from the arc as Brandon nipped Victoria 74-73. Vickery led the Brandon offence in the first half when centre Whitney Dabney was forced to the bench with three quick fouls. A fourth-year guard who’d transferred to Brandon from the U. of Winnipeg hit four-three points in the first half to give the Bobcat a five-point lead at the intermission. The Bobcats were ahead by 17 points with ten minutes to go but the Vikings put on a late second half rally that narrowed the lead to two with 54 seconds to play Vic’s Tom Johnson stole the ball from Joey Vickery and raced in for a layup to tie the game. A Spencer McKay short jumper was swatted away by Patrick Jebbison in the final six seconds of the game. “It wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d called goaltending,” Jebbison later noted. “But it definitely wasn’t.” McKay disagreed. “My fingers were over the rim and the ball was on the way down. It was blatant goaltending and the ball was on the way down. I won’t say that was the difference but it certainly was one of the factors in the game, no question about it,” he told the Montreal Gazette. The rebound was grabbed by Vik’s Kevin Ottwell who was fouled. Hemmings called time out to ice Ottwell but he made the first. Hemmings called another time out and was rewarded when Ottwell missed the second. Brandon’s Marvin Russell was fouled with one second on the clock. Russell missed the front end of a one and one. Vic called time out and their in-bounds passed was deflected and they didn’t get a shot off. Hemmings later noted that “I noticed his (Ottwell’s) form as jerky and I figured, hey, if we can ice him one more time, he’ll pull the string on the next one. Luckily for us, that’s what happened.” Hemmings said TR MVP Vickery was the difference in both the final and the Bobcat regular season. “Pound for pound, inch for inch. Joey is just a tremendous player. Before he joined us in January, teams would collapse their zone around our big guys. His three-point shooting ability is great and teams had to gear their defences more to him. That made it easier for the whole team to operate.” Vickery scored five three-pointers including four in the first half and was tough defensively. “It was a very satisfying win,” Hemmings added. “I think the great thing about this one is that the first national championship final we ever lost was to Victoria. So, to win it against Vic, in (Victoria coach) Ken Shields’ last year, makes it even sweeter. That (1980) was the start of eight titles in a row for them. … We switched our defences a lot in the second half and that slowed them down for a time. But having the lead helped us to save our timeouts and we used them at the end to try and ice the free-throw shooter. He made the first, but didn’t look comfortable, so we called a timeout and that may have helped. … We made him (Ottwell) think about it. We figured that if he made the first, he might tighten up on the second and he did. When we got the ball with two seconds to go, it was the longest two seconds I could remember.” Jebbison scored 19 for Brandon. Dominique added 12, while nabbing 10 boards, Marvin Russell 8, Whitney Dabney 7, Justin Jones 4 and David Nackoney 4, while Dave Brown, Wayne Bennett and Doug Carmichael were scoreless. Spencer McKay led Vic with 23 points and 15 boards. Guard Tom Johnson added 17, Geoff McKay 9, Kevin Ottewell 9, Jerry Divocky 7, Colin Brousson 4, Wade Loukes 2 and Dale Olson 2, while Maurice Basso, Kevin Harrington, Darryn Lansdell and Rick Mesich were scoreless. Shields left Victoria after the season to assume national team head coaching duties from retiring Jack Donohue. The Bobcats finished (31-6) on the season.
The all-tourney team featured: MVP: Joey Vickery (Brandon); Chris Biegler (Regina); Mark Roberts (U.P.E.I.); Spencer McKay (Victoria); Tom Johnson (Victoria); and Patrick Jebbison (Brandon)
The co-bronze medalist Toronto Varsity Blues: Mark Harvey; Rob Wilson; Nick Saul; Art Sharpe; Allen McDougall; Merv Busby; Scott Bleue; Linas Balaisis; Paul Campbell; Roland Semprie; Dave Sutcliffe; Paul Haddock; Dan Conrad; Cargell Stewart; coach Gib Chapman
The co-bronze medalist Regina Cougars: Brian Livingston; Roland Biegler; Mark Gottselig; Chris Biegler; Bill Knudson; Robert Andrist; Richard Cohee; Jeff Christiansen; Kevin Koster; Dean Lato; coach Ken Murray
The silver medalist Victoria Vikings: Spencer McKay; Geoff McKay; Dale Olson; Jerry Divocky; Wade Loukes; Kevin Ottewell; Tom Johnson; Colin Brousson; Rick Mesich; Daryn Lansdell; Maurice Basso; Kevin Harrington; coach Ken Shields
The champion Brandon Bobcats: Joey Vickery; Doug Carmichael; Whitney Dabney; David Dominique; Patrick Jebbison; Dave Nackoney; Marvin Russell; Finbar Strachan; Dave Brown; Justin Jones; Wally Pelly; Roman Huk; Wayne Bennett; Bill Burgess; coach Jerry Hemmings; assistant Bob Mandziuk; assistant Dean Beaubien; assistant Ron McCutcheon; manager Sam Munro; therapist Steve Dzubinski