Winning a national championship is the dream of any collegiate athlete, but winning a title in your hometown? That is an opportunity not every athlete is fortunate enough to experience.
But that is exactly what happened on Saturday night for Langley’s Brett Christensen on a Langley Events Centre court he is quite familiar with.
Christensen and his VIU Mariners teammates – in front of a loud and boisterous crowd which made the trek over from Nanaimo for the championship final – completed a stunning three days of basketball by capturing the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association Men’s Basketball National Championship.
The Mariners, the B.C. representatives as the PacWest Conference champions, defeated the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association champion Sheridan Bruins (Oakville, ON) 85-82 in front of a crowd of more than 700 people.
For Christensen, a second-year forward for the Mariners, this latest title only adds to his memories from Langley Events Centre, having won a Langley District title, a Fraser Valley title and a BC Boys Basketball 4A provincial title, all with his high school, the Walnut Grove Gators, during his five-years with the Langley basketball powerhouse. Now he can add a CCAA national championship to that list.
“I have lots more years left, but that’s a crowning achievement of my sporting career so far,” a smiling Christensen said post-game. “I would love to win another one, but nothing will compare to winning one at LEC.
“I thought about it this past week, even though I have years (of eligibility) left, I am never going to get a chance to win it in my hometown again, in front of this many friends and family. It is just an unbelievable feeling.”
In addition to his family at the game, which included his parents and twin sister, many of Christensen’s former Walnut Grove teammates were also in attendance, cheering the Mariners on.
READ MORE: Langley player comes home for national basketball championships
And it was a pro-VIU crowd with at least more than 50 or 60 fans taking the ferry over from Nanaimo to cheer the Mariners on in their quest for gold.
The championship is the second in VIU history as they also won in 2013. The Mariners were national runner-up in 2015.
It was the third men’s basketball title in school history as they also won the nationals as Malaspina College in 1994.
While VIU captured the PacWest regular season title both last year and this, the Mariners were upset in the 2018 Conference championship game by the Douglas Royals, costing themselves a shot at nationals. Instead, they watched from a distance as the team which beat them went on to a second-place finish on the national stage.
And history nearly repeated itself as top-seeded VIU was 1.2 seconds away from another loss in the PacWest championship game, only this time the Mariners rallied to tie the score and then win in overtime, booking their spot in the eight-team field at LEC for the CCAA tournament.
#CCAAmbb2019 | Final: @VIUMariners defeats @sheridanbruins 85-82. VIU takes 🥇 while Sheridan takes 🥈. https://t.co/kWn1BtaAts pic.twitter.com/bWfN94dDSl
— CCAA 🇨🇦 ACSC (@CCAAsportsACSC) March 17, 2019
The quarter-finals and semifinals, however, required VIU to rally from double-digit deficits both times, erasing 15 and 19-point deficits just to advance to the title game. Only this time, it was the Mariners who went up by 15 in the second quarter only to watch the Bruins storm back and take a six-point lead with 10 minutes to play.
“It felt actually kind of weird going into there. I had my message ready, the same thing I said the other two games, so I kind of had to flip it,” VIU coach Matt Kuzminski said about his message to the team at the half of Saturday’s championship final when they were in the unfamiliar position of being up 45-38.
“I knew with the quality of team that Sheridan is that it was not even close to being over. They kept fighting and made everything tough. I can’t say enough about the character of our guys. Being down the first two games (of the tournament), even in this one it looked grim, we didn’t panic or split up, they just stuck together.”
“We talked about being in the process and staying composed and that is exactly what they did.”
Down six points at the start of the fourth quarter, VIU ripped off a 10-4 run over the first 2:30 to knot the score at 67. With no panic in their game – a trait they displayed all tournament – the Mariners went ahead for good on Harry Fayle’s fourth three-pointer of the game. The defence also came up large as Jerod Dorby blocked a Bruins baseline jumper with 6.5 seconds remaining and the lead at just three points.
Fayle finished with a dozen of his team-high 25 points in the fourth quarter, while Landon Radliff – who was named Most Valuable Player – also came up clutch in the final 10 minutes, with 10 of his 17 points in that stretch. Radliff also finished with six assists and four steals while Cameron Gay added 15 points, five rebounds and five assists. Derby chipped in 11 points to go along with his nine rebounds and Christensen came off the bench for six points and four assists.
Sheridan was led by Kahleek Bakari-Whyte’s 26 points and Nick Campbell had 18. Jemol Edwards had 14 and AJ Thompson added 10.
Sheridan coach Jim Flack – who has been at the helm of the team since 1993 and now has four silver and three bronze medals during that span – said his players may feel the sting right now, but they need to put things into perspective on a grander scale, especially considering tragedies around the world, referencing the recent mass shooting in New Zealand.
“(Our team) will look back at this and the fact they won another Ontario championship in a 22-team league and the fact they were able to make a run here all the way to the national title game,” he said. “Time will create perspective and they will be able to look back at this as a great moment in their lives and that is what we are trying to do for them.”
As for the game, he felt his troops were nervous at the start but recovered to make a game of it.
“We tried to flip the script on them but down the stretch, in those last five or six minutes, they made a lot of big plays,” he said. “We made some big plays, but they just made more big plays than us. They were essentially one possession better than us.”
Christensen said his team’s willingness to play for each other and play together were keys to their success.
“I think it was our tenacity on defence and even on offence, our mantra of we are better than each and every team out here.”
Fayle and Bakari-Whyte were named the 4 Imprint Player of the Games for their respective teams.
In Saturday’s bronze-medal game, it was the Humber Hawks (Etobicoke, ON) defeating the Nomades de Montmorency (Laval, QC) 84-76.
Awards
In addition to winning the gold medal, VIU also won the Doug McCallum Exemplary Leadership Award.
The First Team All-Stars were Blondeau Tchoukuiegno (Montmorency), Jaylan Morgan (Humber), Kahleek Bakari-Whyte (Sheridan), Cameron Gay (VIU) and Harry Fayle (VIU).
The Second Team All-Stars were Royce Sargeant (Langara), Charlie Conner (SAIT), Travis Adams (Holland), Abdou Karim Mane (Vanier) and Nick Campbell (Sheridan).
