Road to Redemption: Dal Wins AUS Crown

This past weekend was a big one for the East Coast basketball scene; before March gets caught up in the Madness, Halifax plays host to the AUS Final 6. For a while we'd been hosting the CIS Final 8 (Canada's Final Four if ya didn't know) the following weekend, but the national title bout recently and temporarily relocated to Ottawa, meaning unless you're one of the 48 Rainmen fans out there, this was the marquee weekend for Hoops in Halifax. It promised to be competitive; the league-leading St. FX X-Men were crippled by the unfortunate suspensions of their leading scorer and key reserves, leaving the window open for the other five squads to capitalize.

The opening rounds were a steady mix of exciting basketball and personal disappointment. While my SMU Huskies were peaced by fuckin' PEI to open the weekend, the late game between Dalhousie and Acadia featured a back-and-forth tempo, thrilling conclusion and impressive scoring duel between swingmen Simon Farine and Casey Fox. In the end, it was Farine's 45 that spelled the difference as his endless barrage of contested drives and 20-foot bombs carried his team to the second round. The next night brought two new teams into the foray: St. FX and Cape Breton had earned byes for holding down the top two seeds, with X clearly eager to prove they were still the team to beat, ruining UPEI by 29. The second game played a much different tune; a one-point win by Dal that would set them up for their first title game in over a decade.

For the first time, the Final was played on a Saturday night (as opposed to Sunday afternoon), the marquee timeslot bringing in a noticeably more enthusiastic (intoxicated) crowd, excited for what was sure to be a compelling battle between a team seeking to salvage its season, and one seeking to salvage its reputation. The atmosphere was vibrant, but the game itself failed to deliver on the hype. The first half was a shitstorm of poor ball movement and abysmal shooting. Dal was persistent at smothering league MVP Christian Upshaw whenever he attacked the rim, and without All-Star Tyler Richards' shooting to punish the collapsed D, it was an effective strategy. Both teams barely cleared 30% from the field over the opening 20, leaving the score knotted at 27 at the half.

The second half opened with a game-defining run by Dal, or more specifically sophomore guard Josh Beattie, who dropped 17 of his 27 points in the first 4 minutes to lift the Tigers to a double-digit lead that X would never recover from. The closest they came was six the rest of the way as Dal cruised relatively comfortably to their first AUS title since '96 and a slot in the national playoffs, leaving X to sweat the wild card committee and wonder what might've been. Farine's early round heroics netted him Tournament MVP honors while Beattie's second-half rampage easily earned him Finals MVP. Despite the Final's flat tempo, it was very well attended, punctuating a successful (and apparently profitable) weekend that bodes well for basketball in Halifax. As the national finals await their imminent return to the Metro Centre, it's encouraging that fans still turned out in droves for a more familiar but less prestigious event. But staying with the present, the CIS Finals await X and Dal next weekend in Ottawa; here's hoping they rep the East Coast as well as Acadia did last year, all the best to both teams.