The VIU Mariners are looking forward to a little March madness of their own, as the first playoff brackets are set.
Vancouver Island University’s men’s and women’s basketball teams begin play at the PacWest championships in Abbotsford starting Friday (March 6).
VIU’s men (20-1) go into the tourney as the No. 1 seed, while the VIU women (16-5) are No. 2 in their table. Both earned byes into the semifinals.
“Watching your competition, seeing who you’re going to play gives you an edge mentally,” said Harrison Stupich, VIU guard. “Also, it was a long season, so the extra rest for our legs is huge.”
The Mariners get to sit back and watch the quarter-finalists “hopefully beat the living daylights out of each other,” said Bill McWhinnie, coach of the M’s women. “It’s an advantage in terms of preparation and rest, but you’ve still got to play well.”
The Mariners think they’re playoff-ready. Stupich said the M’s have really come together in second semester and are still improving.
“We still have yet to reach our full potential, so hopefully this playoff atmosphere will make us do that,” he said.
He’s a graduating senior and that’s motivating, but he said all the Mariners are hungry. When a team is playing with its season on the line, he said, “the intensity gets cranked up 10-fold.”
The M’s stack up well against any team, so provincials will be a matter of forcing their will on the opposition.
“We have some phenomenal basketball players and athletes on our team,” Stupich said. “So long as we play our game and do the things we want to do on the court and don’t let the other team dictate how we play, we should have a really good chance of winning.”
For the M’s women, the season isn’t on the line – the hosts of nationals get a berth no matter what. McWhinnie said he hopes that knowledge allows the team to play loose and play better.
“Yes, we know that we are going to nationals automatically,” said Jamie MacFarlane, Mariners guard. “But we as a team decided at the beginning of the year that we want to earn our way, and that’s what we’re going to try and do.”
COURT SHORTS … In other PacWest news, the league released its year-end awards. Mariners player Justin King is the PacWest Player of the Year after leading the conference in scoring with 23.9 points per game and finishing fifth in rebounding with 6.8 per game. King and Stupich were selected first-team all-stars while Jerod Dorby was named a second-team all-star. Coach Matt Kuzminski is the PacWest Coach of the Year. Mariners women’s players Sienna Pollard and Jenna Carver were named first-team all-stars. Pollard won a PacWest scoring title with 18.5 points per game and was fifth in the conference in rebounding with 8.3 per game. Carver was first in rebounding at 11.8 boards a game and was 10th in scoring with 10.9 points per game. Emily Clarke was selected to the PacWest’s all-rookie team.
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VIU Mariners player Justin King named PacWest Player of the Year… http://t.co/cXRoc2mYR7 @pacwestbc pic.twitter.com/3twOYNRRAx
— Greg Sakaki (@BulletinSports) March 5, 2015
