Great all-star weekend in Toronto. The best I have ever seen.

The NBA ASG ended up getting some media coverage in Quebec last night and today.

Big game tonight.

Well, that was fucking amazing. One of the greatest performances in Raptors' history by Kyle Lowry. I'm a believer.

Awesome!!

Anthony Bennett waived by the Raptors today. Sad that the no. 1 pick in the 2013 draft hasn't caught on anywhere, and has now been let go by his hometown team "to give Bennett an opportunity to seek an increased role elsewhere."

I admit to having felt giddy before the beginning of the season about the prospect of two Toronto guys playing for the Raptors, but while Bennett has been a bust, at least Cory Joseph has been a standout as the team's backup point guard.

The Biosteel All-Canadian Basketball Game is gaining increasing interest. Canada is churning out great basketball talent by the bucket load so this is a glimpse into the pipeline of future stars. It showcases the top 24 high school players in the nation. The talent level coming out of Canada these days is so high that I wouldn't be surprised to see the majority of these guys in the NBA after college. That said, they all have the potential to get there.

It tips off on Monday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m. EST on TSN, live from the University of Toronto's Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport. I'm definitely going. Here's the roster:


Emmanuel Akot, Wasatch Academy (Utah): Winnipeg, Man.
RJ Barrett, Montverde Academy (Fla.): Mississauga, Ont.
Jahvon Blair, Orangeville Prep: Brampton, Ont.
Ignas Brazdeikis, Orangeville Prep: Oakville, Ont.
OâShae Brissett, Findlay Prep (Nev.): Mississauga, Ont.
Nate Darling, DeMatha Catholic High School: Bedford, N.S.
Christian David, Vermont Academy (Vt.): Milton, Ont.
Jerome Desrosiers, Northfield Mount Hermon: Montreal, Que.
Nikola Djogo, Athlete Institute Prep: Stoney Creek, Ont.
Danilo Djuricic, St. Michael's College School: Brampton, Ont.
Marquell Fraser, The Hill Academy: Hamilton, Ont.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Hamilton Heights Christian Academy: Hamilton, Ont.
Justin Jackson, The Hill Academy: Ajax, Ont.
Abu Kigab, Prolific Prep (Calif.): St. Catharines, Ont.
Jaelin Llewellyn, Orangeville Prep: Mississauga, Ont.
Anthony Longpre, Glenelg Country School (Md.): Montreal, Que.
Matur Maker, Athlete Institute Prep: Perth, Western Australia
Thon Maker, Athlete Institute Prep: Perth, Western Australia
Koby McEwen, Wasatch Academy (Utah): Toronto, Ont.
Grant Shephard, Kelowna Secondary School: Kelowna, B.C.
Simisola Shittu, Montverde Academy (Fla.): Burlington, Ont.
Aher Uguak, Harry Ainlay: Edmonton, Alta.
Howard Washington Jr., Montverde Academy (Fla.): Buffalo, N.Y.
Kalif Young, Orangeville Prep: Vaughan, Ont.

Lindell Wigginton of North Preston, N.S. was selected to appear in the game but is unable to participate due to academic obligations. I know Howard Washington plays for Canada but what about the Maker brothers? Do they play for Australia or Sudan? I doubt they play for Canada despite attending the Athlete Institute in Ontario.

It being March, I thought I'd also post the college teams that have punched their ticket to the Final 8. So far we have this:

1. Dalhousie (AUS champs)
2. UBC (Host school)
3. McGill (RSEQ champs)
4. Calgary (Canada West champs)
5. Ryerson (OUA champs)

6. 1 extra berth assigned to the OUA
7. 1 extra berth assigned to Canada West
8. 1 wild card

I'm pretty sure that Carleton will get the extra OUA berth, Thompson Rivers will get the extra Canada West berth, and Ottawa the wild card. Manitoba and McMaster have a case but will end up looking in from the outside.

Never heard of Thompson Rivers U until right now.

BC and Alberta created a slew of new universities this past decade. I imagine most of them were originally colleges that now have degree granting powers. There are a few that are affiliated with an established school. Canada West re-jigged their divisions to accommodate the newbies. The Explorer division is full of new names: Thompson Rivers, Fraser Valley, MacEwan, Mount Royal, UBC Okanagan, and UNBC. Ontario was also busy adding Nipissing and Algoma.

Quebec remains, by far, the most under represented in CIS basketball. There are only 5 teams compared to 8 in Atlantic Canada, a region with less than a third Quebec's population. Atlantic Canada has 1 team for every 300,000 residents. They must have to recruit like crazy outside Atlantic Canada to field competitive squads. It does help that the sport is big out there (AC), but still.

CIS basketball in Quebec is almost where CIS football was a couple of decades ago: it's mostly the anglo schools that play. Although I see UQAM and Laval do have teams.

Quebec doesn't really have a strong basketball culture generally. For most kids basketball is something you might play in gym class, and your high school might have had a team that played against other schools.

It pretty much stops there for 99.9% of kids. Kinda like volleyball when you think of it.

If you look at who the top players to come out of Quebec tend to be, most are from the anglo or immigrant communities.

After graduating from university in NS, I moved to Montreal. I knew college hoops were a far bigger deal in the Maritimes than any where else in Canada but was still shocked at how much of a fringe sport it was in Quebec. I'm constantly puzzled how CIS basketball continues to remain an obscure preoccupation from Quebec to BC. Canada's top 10-15 teams are quite good, games are very affordable, and it's good entertainment.

In the 90s, you could ask a random person on a Halifax street who they thought would win the AUS title and no one would think it a strange question. A good number of people would know what you're talking about and offer up some commentary on who was going to take it. I attended the Final 8 in Ottawa a few years back and 4 bus loads of Cape Bretoners made the trip to cheer on the Capers. There were a few hundred who showed up to support Acadia too. These are tiny tiny schools yet their fans almost drowned out the hometown Carleton Ravens and Ottawa GGs.... schools with massive student populations. The Ottawa crowd seemed astonished at the level of support for NS teams. I wasn't. The Maritimes remain the only place in Canada where college hoops matter.

Basketball is booming in southern Ontario, but even there college hoops mean the NCAA... never their owns teams. The NCAA tournament is fabulous and I fully understand the interest in programs like Kentucky or Oregon which have Canadian stars. That said, the complete disinterest in our own teams by Ontarians continues to puzzle me. Surely we're close to the point where people start taking an interest?

CIS sports in general don't have a huge following in much of the country... it seems that football is really the only sport that manages to maintain much of a general following, but even that tends to be concentrated in a few hotspots (Sask, Quebec, NS).

My impression is that most of the universities which form the CIS like it that way... for better or for worse, they don't seem the least bit interested in promoting collegiate sports the way that the NCAA does in the US.

Looks like I was right about who'd get the 3 berths up for grabs for the CIS tournament. #1 vs #8, #2 vs #7, #3 vs #6, #4 vs #5. The brackets continue so that the winner of #1 vs #8 will meet the winner of #4 vs #5. The winners of the other 2 games form the other bracket Semi. Teams that qualified and the seeding:

1. Ryerson Rams (OUA champions: 17-2 regular season / 3-0 playoffs)
2. Carleton Ravens (OUA finalists: 16-3 regular season / 2-1 playoffs)
3. Ottawa Gee-Gees (At-Large Berth: 17-2 regular season / 2-1 playoffs)
4. Calgary Dinos (CWUAA champions: 17-3 regular season / 4-0 playoffs)
5. McGill Redmen (RSEQ champions: 12-4 regular season / 2-0 playoffs)
6. Dalhousie Tigers (AUS champions: 13-7 regular season / 2-0 playoffs)
7. Thompson Rivers WolfPack (CWUAA finalists: 16-4 regular season / 3-2 playoffs)
8. UBC Thunderbirds (Hosts: 16-4 regular season / 3-1 playoffs)

UBC going deep will be good for attendance but I can't see them getting passed the Rams.

I know that a group in Western Canada tried to form a broadcast consortium which would have the top tier CIS Football teams in Canada play each other in the regular season. The response from the Ontario universities was lukewarm at best.

Just discovered a Chronicle-Herald piece that advocates something similar.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/sports/...n-cis-football

Without knowing a thing about CIS basketball, considering Carleton has won 11 out of the last 13 years, I'm assuming they must be the consensus favourites? ;)

Ryerson beat Carleton and Ottawa this season and finished third last year. It's a pretty tight between the three.

Carleton lost both meetings to Ottawa this year. Ryerson only lost to Windsor and Guelph.

^ Interesting...sounds competitive.

^^ We're finally seeing an end to the dominance of Carleton. It's been a problem for CIS basketball for decades. I remember Victoria dominating for about a decade. Brandon used to be good. Now it's Carleton. The lack of parity isn't good for the sport and the continued weakness of the AUS is problematic. It's a shame because that region of Canada has the most cultural interest in varsity basketball/football yet they just don't have the population base or financial clout to field competitive teams.

When the AUS conference produces a legitimate challenger, support for that team goes through the roof. SMU football in the late 80s. Acadia, SMU, and St. FX basketball periodically. Nova Scotians want a team to get behind but athletic success has been hard to come by for 20 years.

It would mean a de-facto 2 tier system in CIS. There will obviously be great resistance to this by small established schools (Bishops, St. FX, Acadia) that don't have the size or clout to be part of the top division. You'd also see the end of traditional rivalries and it would splinter an already weak league. I'd prefer trying to boost the profile and support for varsity basketball/football across CIS. It needs to be run more professionally and attempts made to market and close the gap with the NCAA.

There's an old guard at many Canadian universities that stubbornly want to keep varsity sports as low key and periphery as possible. They look upon sports with scorn and worry about losing clout on campus. It's a legitimate concern that academics might one day play second fiddle to athletics due to its revenue generating potential for a school but purposely stunting varsity sports is inexcusable. Why should Canadian kids have to leave Canada to pursue their athletics career? We should be providing those opportunities at our own universities.

Worth noting that after their last game, the Raptors have moved up past OKC to fourth in the overall NBA standings... (still second in the east though)