Quebec City, QC – The Laval Rouge et Or were supposed to be here but not supposed to be here.
A down 6-10 regular season in the RSEQ and a loss in the semifinal meant the Rouge et Or were left to sit and wait for an expected loss to a provincial champion in the top seed.
They got their matchup with the Victoria Vikes, but thanks to the raucous crowd rattling the Vikes enough at the start of the game and strong defence in the back half, the Rouge et Or stunned Victoria to advance to the semifinal.
That was where it was supposed to stop. In a matchup against the AUS champion Dalhousie Tigers, it looked like Laval might not do the unthinkable.
One 85-74 win later, they have.
For the second time in the last three years, the eighth seed will play for the national title, and on their home floor, they’ll try not just to prove they belong here but also to become champions for the first time in program history.
The crowd inside the Amphithéâtre Desjardin slowly filled in across the evening’s early game between Queen’s and uOttawa, but by the time it reached tipoff at just after 8 pm, it somehow felt louder than the previous game.
Yet the Dalhousie Tigers didn’t seem phased at first.
Thanks to 12 points from AUS MVP Malcolm Christie the Tigers led 25-20 after a quarter of play. Laval fought back in the second quarter though as 10 points from Ismael Diouf get the quarter score even and the game 48-43 for Dalhousie at halftime.
Into the third quarter, the building seemed to get louder on every possession. With Dalhousie flipping sides, they had to attack the side with Laval’s army of courtside supports, banging pots and ringing bells for every touch of the ball.
Trying to work past the noise and the emotion in their own game is something the Rouge et Or have had to figure out.
“It’s just basketball,” Laval head coach Nathan Grant said. “They’re emotional, they’re going crazy because they know what’s on the line, but we take ourselves out of the tournament and put ourselves back into an environment where it’s just basketball.”
After their quarterfinal win over the Brock Badgers, Dalhousie coach Rick Plato acknowledged that while they were used to big crowds, they weren’t used to benign the villain in them.
That challenge finally reared its head in the fourth quarter as the Tigers collapsed.
Shooting 4/20 from the field and 1/14 from three-point range, the Tigers made miss after miss and only seemed to get more frustrated as the clock wound down, facing jeer after jeer. They were ultimately outscored 24-9 in the quarter.
Although they have needed to work to avoid getting too excited, the emotion in moments like that only galvanized the Rouge et Or.
“It’s not about what we’re doing,” Grant said. “It’s about how we’re making everybody around us feel, that’s the most important part for us.”
“The fact that we know that people in here love the way we play, love the way we compete, they’re getting emotional about our games, that drives us to go the extra mile.”
Thanks to their success so far, the Rouge et Or are now one win away from giving their faithful the ultimate reward.
