Mac basketball down to the wire

All it takes is one.

The McMaster Marauders will likely only need one victory in this weekend’s OUA Final Four to secure a berth in the CIS Final 8 national tournament. Taylor Black, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, does not care about getting one win, though. He wants two.

“We aren’t coming here to just qualify for nationals. We are coming to win [the Wilson Cup]” said Black, in an interview on Feb. 25. Now, that is not a guarantee that is so often seen in professional sports before a key game. It’s a representation of what this team believes they are capable of.

The first game for the Maroon and Grey is against the Ottawa Gee-Gees – the team that handed Mac their worst loss of the year. The teams’ lone regular season match-up was a 15-point win Ottawa win in the Burridge Gym.

These are different teams though. McMaster has clearly progressed as the season has gone on – winning games by huge margins, getting a balance of scoring and holding potent scorers to paltry stat lines. On the flip side, the Gee-Gees have a different look than the team Mac saw in November. Terry Thomas is a fourth-year forward playing in his first season as a Gee-Gee after transferring from St. Francis Xavier, and he has transformed the Ottawa offence. He is shooting the most field goals per game, shoots 45.2 per cent on five three-point attempts a game and is second on the team in rebounds per game.

Black gave Thomas credit and called him a “difference-maker,” for the Gee-Gees, but also said that Mac has some difference-makers of their own. He pointed to the athletic defenders McMaster has, and how they can disrupt Thomas’s game.

“I don’t know if there is anyone who has been in Thomas’ face like Aaron Redpath will be, and I don’t think [Thomas] has seen athletic defenders like Leon Alexander and Rohan Boney,” said Black.

McMaster’s head coach Amos Connolly has clearly defined what the Marauders need to do to grab a spot in the Wilson Cup Final. Against a team with the second best offensive rating in the country, they cannot come out flat.

“It is the difference between winning and losing,” said Connolly. “Against Western, our guys came out flat. We can’t afford to do that with Ottawa.”

The advantage that McMaster has is on the defensive end, according to Mac’s bench boss. He says that they have “really tightened up” guarding their basket, and pointed to the rotation of perimeter defenders as a key factor for the game. Connolly is confident in his team and thinks the game will be close throughout.

Mac let the game slip away in the fourth quarter in the regular season tilt, but played Ottawa tight until that point.

The winner of the game will move on to the Wilson Cup Final and will play the winner of the Carleton and Windsor match-up. The finalists will qualify for the Final 8. Should Carleton beat Windsor, the team that takes third place will get a spot in the national tournament because the Ravens are the host school.

Carleton and Windsor play at 6 p.m. on Feb. 28, and McMaster plays Ottawa at 8 p.m. All Wilson Cup games will be aired on Sportsnet360.