The St. Thomas men’s basketball team didn’t play any games over the Christmas break, but their chances of making it to nationals still doubled.
The Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association announced that STU’s conference, the ACAA, would be getting a wild card spot this year. Instead of only the team who wins the ACAA playoffs getting to go to nationals, both teams that make it to the finals will advance.
Each of the five conferences sends one team to playoffs in March, while the team hosting nationals sends its top two. Two wild card spots are given to the most deserving conferences, bringing the number of teams at nationals to eight. ACAA and ACAC will get the wild card for both men’s and women’s basketball.
“That was pretty good news for the conference,” said the St. Thomas men’s basketball coach Dwight Dickinson.
The decision was made due to the success teams from the ACAA have had recently. Two years ago St. Thomas made it to nationals and won the bronze medal. Last year the Holland College Hurricanes went and got silver.
“I think it’s a real feather in our cap to expose the athletes in the Atlantic conference to national competition as much as we can,” said Dickinson.
With two teams going, more players will get to share their experience of playing against top teams. St. Thomas went as that second team in 2002, where they were able to do even better than the team who came in first.
“It gives an opportunity for young players to motivate themselves towards getting themselves to the highest competition levels they can.”
This year the conference is very competitive, with ACAA teams Holland College and Crandall University ranked nationally. The Tommies, who are currently fifth in the conference, will likely have to beat one of those teams if they want to make it to nationals this year.
“We’re at the bottom of that bubble right now, and we hope to move up through it,” said Dickinson. “In the past we’ve been almost consistently better, even with injuries, in the second half of the season.”
Dickinson said the development they have taking place in the first half of the season takes time to set in. At the end of January and early February is when the team sees the most improvement.
If the Tommies are able to make it to nationals, it will have a lot to do with the hard work the players put in. Some players come in half an hour early for practice and don’t leave until half an hour after.
“That’s two and a half hours of work the boys put in daily as a team, and then they’re over in the weight room and working on their shooting skills and footwork skills on their own probably three times a week on top of that.”
To get to nationals, Dickinson would like to see an improvement in his team’s offensive output and sharing of the basketball. While their defence has been strong, it’s hard to match the spread against some of the high-scoring teams. It will take hard work, which is something Dickinson knows the Tommies have.
“To have an opportunity to go to nationals with all the work the guys put in, I think it’s well deserved. We don’t know who’s going to make it of course, but we’re working for it.”
