CMU sets tone for MCAC men’s basketball season
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If a pair of games against fellow Manitoba team Canadian Mennonite University was a measuring stick, the Providence Pilots men’s basketball team came up short.
In games in Winnipeg and Niverville Dec. 6 and 7 the Blazers took care of business, winning by a the lopsided totals of 101-67 and 96-69.
While the Pilots are dealing with some injuries heading into the Christmas break, head coach Pierre Dubreuil said to compete with CMU for the Manitoba Colleges Athletic Conference championship they’ll need to improve beyond just health to challenge the pre-season favourites.
“I’m convinced (CMU) are a really, really good team, obviously they just proved it,” Dubreuil said after the weekend’s results, adding the Blazers could easily finish first in the Northern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which includes American teams.
“For us, first we have to get healthy. We’re not healthy right now. We’re playing with injuries, we’re playing with pain.”
Included on that list of injured players is star senior power forward Riley Paul, who missed the game on Dec. 6, but was able to power through an ankle sprain for limited minutes on the 7th. Paul leads the MCAC in points per game with 18.7.
“We’ve just got to find ways to execute better on defense,” Dubreuil said.
“We made too many easy mistakes on defense that cost us too much tonight. We have to find a way to correct that.”
It was also clear pre-season worries the team could be in tough at the point guard position might come true, with the Pilots struggling to get into their offensive sets cleanly and looking disjointed early in first half against CMU, prompting Dubriel to passionately urge his team to play better during a time out.
The Blazers took a 15-2 lead in the first quarter and while Providence would go on a 10-0 run to pull close, CMU blasted back to lead 33-18 at one point.
Despite the losses to CMU, Dubreuil was optimistic about the start of the season. Those defeats were the first regular season blemishes on Providence’s record.
“The guys are embracing the principles that we’re giving them,” Dubreuil said, adding he expects the team to live and play with JOY, which he explained stands for Jesus, others and yourself as well as the non-acronym meaning of the word.
“When they are at the best embracing (JOY), we definitely see the results and see the intensity on the court. We want to keep that up and we want to keep competing together.”
The Pilots women’s team also played the Blazers for a pair of games the same nights and kept their undefeated start to the regular season alive, coming back from down 10 late in the fourth to steal the game Dec. 7th, prompting an excited celebration on the court.
The Providence teams will not play again until the new year, including the school’s volleyball teams.
Both Pilots squads are leading the MCAC in the volleyball standings, going a perfect 2-0 this week in games against St Boniface and CMU.
The women’s team, which finished last regular season undefeated and lost in the final, is once again 10-0 to start this season. They may have already locked up first place in the conference, as Assiniboine College and CMU are tied in second with identical records of only 4-6.
The Men’s team has rebounded from an early season loss to CMU to hold a strong record at 9-1. They’re three games ahead of second-place CMU.
The playoffs were tweaked for both volleyball and basketball in the MCAC this season, meaning the top volleyball finisher gets to host the final with the second and third place teams playing in a single semi-final. In the three-team basketball loop, the top two teams in the regular season will play in the championship match, hosted in the top seed’s home gym.