How things have changed for Mike Raimbault.
Last season, as head coach of the UNBC Northern Timberwolves men's basketball team, Raimbault compiled a 22-1 record in the regular season and playoffs and capped things off with a victory in the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association national championship game.
This season, Raimbault is coaching at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport level and his University of Winnipeg Wesmen recently finished the first half of their season with a 1-9 record.
Obviously, more wins would be nice. At the same time, Raimbault said the current position of the Wesmen doesn't surprise him.
"It's pretty much what I expected going in," said Raimbault, a Brandon native who guided the Timberwolves for two seasons and accepted the Winnipeg job last April, just weeks after UNBC's golden run at the CCAA nationals. "We have 11 new guys and really only two guys that have played any minutes at the CIS level. It's been a learning process, definitely."
Within the CIS, the Wesmen compete in the Canada West Universities Athletic Association. Their lone win to date was a 78-67 decision against the University of Calgary Dinos on Nov. 5.
"Any win in this league is a good one," Raimbault said.
"I don't really feel like we haven't been competitive," he added. "We had probably the toughest schedule of anyone in the conference. We played six straight games against teams in the top seven in the country. We didn't really have illusions of going in and upsetting UBC at UBC but we went in and we played them tough both nights (a 98-81 loss on Nov. 12 and a 114-86 defeat on Nov. 13). We were in the game the majority of the way, as much as the score maybe isn't indicative of that."
One player who would have been a help to the Wesmen this season is Jose Araujo, an all-star shooting guard for the Timberwolves last season. Araujo, a Toronto resident and El Salvadoran national team member, had intended to follow Raimbault to Winnipeg but, instead, isn't playing at all. Raimbault said Araujo had to return to Toronto to "attend to family complications.
"That's just sort of the way it goes," Raimbault said. "You never really know what you have until September rolls around and everything's there."
Raimbault has remained in touch with his UNBC replacement, Todd Jordan, so he's aware of how things have been going for the 5-2 Timberwolves.
The night of the T-wolves' home-opener, Nov. 19, team members and coaches from 2009-10 were presented with their national championship rings. Raimbault hasn't gotten his yet.
"Todd said they were going to send it out but it hasn't arrived yet," said Raimbault, who wasn't able to attend the ceremony because his Wesmen were in Saskatoon for a game against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies. "I think he was waiting on a couple other things to put in with it."
The Wesmen will resume league play Jan. 7 in Kamloops against the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack, the only team behind them in the Canada West standings. Raimbault is anticipating a more successful second half of the season.
"Like I said, our schedule was pretty front-loaded in terms of playing UBC and Trinity and defending champion Saskatchewan in the first seven games that we played," he said. "Now we've got a chance to move forward. We're looking forward to the second half and obviously it's a process of rebuilding. We're going to have to bring in a solid recruiting class and we're going to have to continue to grow. It's going to take a while to get where I want to be."
