Parity turns Final 8 into pick ’em event
Upsets could be a big part of national championship at Ryerson
Lisa Thomaidis has had to devise game plans to stop some of the best basketball players in the world as head coach of Canada’s national women’s team.
And now, in her other role as mentor of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies, Thomaidis has to figure out how to slow down a five-foot-five scoring dynamo coming off a weekend that included a 51-point explosion in a U Sports playoff game.
Acadia’s Haley McDonald presents a unique challenge for the Huskies at the national championship starting Thursday at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre.
“Oh man, yeah, she’s a handful,” Thomaidis said on Wednesday afternoon. “She’s talented, she can score in a number of different ways. And so, obviously a lot of what we’re going to do is going to be focused on limiting her, but they do have other scorers.”
McDonald, who followed-up her record-breaking AUS semifinal by scoring 29 points in a gold-medal victory over Memorial, knows how to play to her strengths.
“I think I’m kind of a more nifty, creative player,” she said. “We used to have a player on our team that was described as a hammer, and I think I’m more of like a chisel, almost.” The Saskatchewan-Acadia game (Thursday, 2 p.m.) is one of four quarter-finals at the Mattamy Athletic Centre on the first day of the national women’s championship. No. 2 McMaster faces No. 7 Concordia at noon, No. 1 Laval meets No. 8 Ryerson at 6 p.m. and No. 4 Ottawa plays No. 5 Regina at 8 p.m.
The consolation semifinals are Friday evening, the semifinals Saturday. The medal winners will be determined Sunday.
“I think there’s a lot of parity in this tournament,” said McMaster coach Theresa Burns, whose team knocked off the former No.1, Ottawa, in the OUA championship. “I think anyone can win. ... I understand all the seeding stuff (but) anybody can beat anybody. For sure there’s going to be an upset somewhere in one of those seedings.”
Certainly, there are good teams sprinkled throughout the country, leaving the tournament with no clear-cut favourite.
“I think that just helps every team get better,” Thomaidis said. “When you have quality teams across the country, everyone else is driven to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. … Now it seems like anyone in the tournament is capable of winning it.”
McDonald, a third-year guard from Port William, N.S., is sure to draw a lot of attention, because of her scoring exploits in an 88-84 win over the UPEI Panthers. The 51 points were the most scored in an AUS game since 1976. And the performance caught her by surprise.
“I had no idea,” she said. “I thought I had scored like high 30s, low 40s maybe. They said ‘Did you know what you did? You broke the AUS record,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God! Wow! I had no idea.’ It’s amazing.”