The Peak

Women's BBall : Champs begin defense of national crown

By Chad Klassen

In what has been a trend in the Bruce Langford era of SFU women’s basketball, the Clan are back in the post-season as the CIS’s first-ranked school and Canada West’s most well-balanced and dangerous team.

With the two wins over the University of Victoria Vikes, the Clan, of course, clinched home-court advantage throughout the Pacific Division playoffs, which begin Friday (February 15) at SFU’s West Gym.

Their first-round opponent will be the UCFV Cascades, who are a team that has had its ups-and-downs throughout much of the year and were swept 3-0 by the SFU women in the overall season series.

The two schools have met three time this season, and none of the games were close. The Clan dominated UCFV, outscoring the Cascades 235-136.

In only their second season as part of the Canada West, the Abbotsford-based school is making its second consecutive playoff appearance. Last year, the Cascades were beat 2-0 by the UBC Thunderbirds.

While UCFV was relatively competitive with the T-Birds — losing the second game only 68-57 — the team has struggled to even put up a fight against the Clan in its short history. In the six games ever to be played between the two schools, SFU is 6-0 and has outscored the Cascades by a combined 496-268.

Last season, UCFV scored 44 points in all three games and has only managed to hit the 58-point mark against SFU this year.

But despite their recent dominance over the Cascades, coach Langford noted the team has to focus on the positives that led to the season sweep, and not just take it for granted.
“We’ve got to not think about [sweeping UCFV 3-0], as much as think about what are things that we did to be able to do that,” said Langford. “They’re going to be physical, think that they only have to win two games themselves to move on to [the next round], so they’re going to be highly motivated.”

“We have to keep getting the ball into the post, we have to compete really hard defensively, we have to keep our focus, and I think if we can do those things, we’ll be okay.”

A first-round series win will guarantee a berth into the Canada West Final Four. Assuming that SFU and UBC advance and play each other in the second round, the loser of that series will earn the wildcard spot since both schools posted the two best records in the conference.

“Either [SFU or UBC] will be the wildcard team for sure, as long as we both win our first rounds,” Langford explained. In the unlikely scenario that the Clan or Thunderbirds happen to drop their first-round series, the wildcard spot will then go to either the University of Calgary Dinos or the University of Alberta Pandas.

Nevertheless, the three division champs in Canada West, as well as the wildcard team (the school that holds the best record among non-division winners), will advance to play in the Canada West Final Four.

Looking ahead in the post-season, UBC looks to be the one school that has the ability to knock off SFU and prevent a repeat.

Despite taking the season series 2-1 over their crosstown rivals, UBC stands as their most formidable opponent entering this season’s post-season — as the Thunderbirds were two years ago when they eliminated SFU en route to their national title.

In addition, Langford calls Calgary and Alberta extremely good teams, which both sat at 15-5 and tied for first in the Canada West’s Central Division entering the last weekend of the season.

The Clan will play and have to beat the winner of that playoff series — that is, if the Dinos or Pandas meet in the second round — if it hopes to do well in the Final Four and ultimately advance to the 2008 CIS National Championships. The top three schools from that elite group will have the chance to play for the national championship in Saskatoon come March.

Now there’s the obvious assumption that because the Clan had such a great regular season, with only one in the loss column, that they are a shoo-in to make it back to nationals and battle for a second straight title.

But Langford, assuming the role of New England Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick, is downplaying the fact that his team is one of the favourites to repeat as CIS national champions.

“Look what happened to the Patriots,” noted Langford, emphasizing that anything can happen come playoff time, no matter how dominant SFU was during the regular season at 22-1.

New England, of course, went undefeated during the regular season, and entered Super Bowl XLII 18-0 before losing to the New York Giants last Sunday.

The Clan sit in a similar position as the favourites to reach the nationals and do well after their outstanding regular season.

The Canada West conference has dominated the better part of the past two decades, capturing the last 16 national championships. The Clan have claimed two of the last three titles themselves, and with the team ranked number-one all season, there chances are high that the trend will continue. We will have to see how they perform this post-season in what is the last playoff run for senior point guard Lani Gibbons, who will obviously want to go out and finish her varsity career as a champion.