Never look past the first game.
In tournament play, it's a golden rule.
But, at the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association men's basketball national championship, neither the UNBC Northern Timberwolves nor the Vancouver Island University Mariners could be blamed if they are peeking ahead to a possible second-round match-up.
If the teams win their opening games today in Oshawa, Ont., they will collide with the force of opposing storm fronts in the Friday semifinals. The game would be a rematch of the B.C. final, which saw the Nanaimo-based Mariners edge the Timberwolves 96-90.
"That would be really exciting," said UNBC post player Dennis Stark. "I'm sure they know the draw just as well as we do and I'd say that they're probably hoping they don't see us in the second round if they win their first game. We're definitely very motivated and I would like nothing more than to have to go through VIU on the way to another national championship."
Today, the fourth-seeded Timberwolves will play the fifth-ranked Lethbridge College Kodiaks. When that game ends, the top-ranked Mariners will step onto the floor against the No. 8 seed, the host Durham College Lords.
The UNBC-Lethbridge tilt at 3 p.m. PT can be viewed online (http://www.ccaamensbasketball2011.ca/).
The provincial final between the T-wolves and Mariners was the latest installment in a rivalry that has taken on epic proportions in the last couple years.
In the 2009-10 B.C. Colleges Athletic Association regular season, the Timberwolves and Mariners ended the schedule with a doubleheader at the Northern Sport Centre. In front of near-sellout crowds, the T-wolves won both games -- 80-69 and 79-75 in a fourth-quarter comeback. The losses were the first ones of the season for the Mariners, who had been ranked No. 1 in Canada before that weekend. They finished the season at 16-2 and were supplanted as the nation's top team by the Timberwolves (17-1).
A couple weeks later, in the BCCAA playoff championship game, the T-wolves beat the Mariners again, this time 84-65. For the Mariners, that defeat was crushing because it happened on their home court and, even worse, it kept them out of the CCAA nationals. The Timberwolves ended up winning the national title and the Mariners could only start thinking about the 2010-11 season.
UNBC and VIU met again early this season at the NSC and, in a two-game set, each team won once. UNBC prevailed 91-89 on Nov. 19 and VIU triumphed 81-77 on Nov. 20. The Mariners' loss to the Timberwolves was their only defeat of the season. They finished at 17-1 and the T-wolves went 16-2.
Todd Jordan, head coach of the Timberwolves, said he'd welcome a nationals clash with the Mariners.
"I think in the back of everyone's head, we'd be excited to get that opportunity again," he said. "We haven't been talking about VIU, our focus has been completely on Lethbridge but if we do get past them there's a good chance we would see VIU. That would be a little easier to prepare for, obviously, because we're very familiar with them. It would be just one more chance for us to go out and beat the heck out of one another again."
