U Sports is increasing its own gear madness.
For the first time, the male and female university basketball championships of Canada will be played next to the other on the Point Gray campus at British Columbia University.
The Athletic Director of UBC, Kavie Toor, expects great things from the innovative event.
“He will feel like a basketball festival,” said Toor. “It really will have an incredible feeling, probably similar to a [U.S.] March Madness “.
The end of the 8 of the men’s and female years extend from Thursday to Sunday through the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird and War Memorial Gymnasium Sports Center. The live coverage of both tournaments is available on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem.
Game schedules are intertwined with female competitions that lead to men and vice versa, fulfilling one of Toor’s integration objectives. The male championship goes at 10 am et/1 pm PT on Sunday, followed by women at 1 PM ET/4 PM PT.
“Mainly throughout the tournament we saw it as a great opportunity to positively establish a new path forward. And we hope that after these championships, other schools realize and be like, OK, let’s make two championships,” said Toor.
“Because he lifts university sports as a whole. It brings the women’s championship as a whole that is on par with the male championship and creates a new formula.”
Of course, there have been some obstacles to Toor and his team while navigating a new land.
Main Logistics Challenge
Logistics, like the schedule, presented the main challenge, but UBC successfully pressed sports U to add to the male tournament one day so that everything works.
Toor said the planning process required a lot of creativity and ideation.
“We see our role in the Canadian ecosystem to lead and assume these risks and take advantage of these opportunities to create something new, powerful and shocking,” he said.
Together with the games itself, the UBC Basketball Festival will have a panel of women in the sport entitled She Got Next, a training clinic starring Toronto Raptors Assistant Jama Mahlala and basketball camps in indigenous communities.
The Larry O’Brien trophy will also appear.
“While sport is the driver, we also want to find opportunities to organize auxiliary events that help create some impact,” said Toor.
For basketball fans in Vancouver, everything creates a weekend completely dedicated to sport, especially when they witnessed Toronto received an expansion team from the WNBA, which Toor said it caused “many jealousy.”
Meanwhile, for the new fans, the 8 finals present a great opportunity to see the sport in their best base.
“In general, when people appear for the first time, they always say: ‘Wow, I had no idea that this was such a high level of basketball, hockey, football, etc.” so we want to create that for more people and we also hope you inspire young people. “
In addition, there is the basketball contest itself.
UBC teams win the tournament
Both UBC squadron arrived at the tournament through the qualification instead of trusting a host position, with the fifth sown women (facing the number 4 of Saint Mary’s in the quarterfinals) and the third men (faced with No. 6 UPEI).
It will be the first confrontation between the teams in each case.
But entering as host team can be a double -edged sword, even if that means getting surprising thanks from the NBA Hall of the NBA Shaquille O’Neal and TNT’s and TNT’s Inside the NBA crew.
There are obvious positives in which players and coaches have the comforts of their own beds and their own facilities. In addition, the crowd must be 100 percent in favor of UBC.
However, there is also an additional pressure that comes with the court of origin. Each of the male and female Thunderbirds enters the National Loss Championship in the final of the West of Canada.
“If you can overcome that first night and work through the emotion of a great crowd in the great stage and advance, I think, if you are in that last four, I give our teams a good opportunity like any other. But often those first games are complicated because there are opponents that you have not seen before,” said Toor.
Toor said their teams would support their depth, as they did throughout the season, on the way to an 18-2 record for women and 15-5 brand for men.
Instead of trusting a single star, having options when the pressure increases could be crucial.
“Our coaching staff in all areas is really trying to make sure they are well prepared and that they enter the excited games, but still in a keel and do not try to do too much. Sometimes, when the stage is great, you get to the moment when you are trying to force things,” said Toor.
In fact, it will be the greatest stage, perhaps for Canadian university basketball players, since both men and women join to compete in one place for the first time in UBC.
