Team Canada coach Kevin Hanson delivered the news in his pre-game speech in the dressing room Thursday night in Shezhen, China.
Turkey's surprise win over Australia meant Canada was playing for first place in its pool at the 26th Summer Universiade.
That was all Nathan Yu of Prince George and the rest of his teammates needed to inspire them to an 83-50 win over Hong Kong to clinch top spot in the B pool.
"Winning the pool and getting first is pretty cool, I think we shocked the world doing that," said Yu, who collected 11 points and made three steals in 19 minutes 21 seconds of playing time as Canada's starting point guard.
"It's pretty amazing, we only had a five-day training camp at UBC and then we headed out. In that short of time it's pretty amazing what we've done. It just shows the kind of talent and chemistry we have.
"Hopefully I can hit some big shots and get a medal for Canada and for Prince George."
Canada will face Romania in a quarterfinal playoff on Saturday. The winner advances to the semifinals against the winner of the United States-Lithuania playoff. The U.S. beat Israel 94-84 Thursday to finish its pool play at 5-0, having outscored its opponents a combined 543-336. The other quarterfinal matchups Saturday are Germany-Serbia and Russia-Finland.
Warren Ward shot a game-high 17 points for Canada against Hong Kong.
"We knew if we won today we were going to lock up first, but we started off really slow, we were down eight points in the first two minutes," said Yu. "We figured it out and started to hit some shots and beat Hong Kong by 33, which is pretty cool because that's the city I have [Chinese] citizenship for. Hopefully I can play there [professionally]. "
Yu father Simon, who grew up in China, is there with him at the tournament and has been a tour guide and interpreter for the Canadian team.
"It's been pretty amazing with him being here to experience this, the highest level of basketball I've ever played," said Nathan. He's in basketball heaven."
Yu, is entering his fifth season at UBC. His Thunderbirds coach, Kevin Hanson, is his head coach in China and Hanson's familiarity with Yu resulted in an enhanced role in the tournament for the 22-year-old, named co-captain of the team.
"I'm not shooting the basketball particularly well, but that's not what I'm here to do," Yu said. "I need to get guys the ball and I've been doing as pretty good job of being a leader on the court and running the offence and hopefully keeping it going.
"I don't think I'd be the starting point guard on this team unless I had Kevin. I know this system we're running so well and that's why he kind of looked to me to lead the team."
Canada opened with an 85-75 overtime win over Turkey, then upset the defending champions from Serbia 70-67. A 63-61 loss to Australia on Wednesday is the only blemish on the record.
"If we went up to someone at the start of this tournament and said Canada was going to come first in a pool with Serbia, Turkey and Australia, they would have laughed in our faces," Yu said. "We're pretty proud of what we've accomplished so far. This is the second-largest sporting event after the Olympics, with 13,000 athletes from 160 countries. Going from the gyms of Duchess Park to this is pretty cool."
