Carleton's Clinton Springer-Williams was the last starter removed in Sunday's final (Chris Roussakis for Yahoo! Canada Sports)Ottawa is called the world's biggest small town, but Toronto is giving it a great run in the sports department.

Or at least its media does, which might explain why the Toronto Star, which normally gives little play to Canadian university basketball, pathetically alleged Carleton Ravens coach Dave Smart's player "ran up the score" during Sunday's national final, where Carleton won by a record 50 points. It's in the same vein as the same media outlet falling for it hook, line, sinker a few weeks back when the NHL's Ottawa Senators did some tiptop-notch trolling of Leaf Nation by asking season-ticket holders to keep seats from falling into fans of the Buds. Deep-down, someone in the Senators sanctum (Senctum?) knew the Toronto media would pounce on the chance to lampoon Pleasantville. Far be it to point out Ottawa is not Toronto's competition in the Shelbyville Syndrome steeplechase.

Who knows, maybe Star contributor Charlie Wilkins is trolling Ottawans and I'm falling for it. In the course of a heartfelt take on the runners-up, Smart got sideswiped. It wasn't necessary for the writer to make his point and worse, it was false. Then again, it's CIS so it's not like accuracy matters.

It was a painful loss for the Thunderwolves, made the more so by Carleton coach Dave Smart. Throughout the match, the CIS coach of the year paraded along the sidelines in a virtual parody of an aggrieved commander — agonizing, screaming, slapping his forehead in apparent dismay over his team’s ineptitude. Meanwhile, his efficient charges ran up the score in spectacular fashion, ending with a 92-42 annihilation of the Thunderwolves, who appeared to have little left after their victories on Friday and Saturday. Smart left his starters in until the last four minutes of the lopsided victory. (Toronto Star)

Dave Smart speaks to Ravens veteran Tyson Hinz (third player from right) on Sunday (Chris Roussakis for Yahoo Canada Sports)

Characteristically, Dave Smart wanted little to do with making much out of the Carleton University now owning the record for Canadian Interuniversity Sport men's basketball titles.

The question was bound to come up on Sunday, since the sports media is wired to think comparatively. Carleton has now won nine of the last 11 national titles and seem poised to hit double digits next season, when it is again slated to host the CIS Final 8. Their 92-42 win over Lakehead officially broke the tie with the Victoria Vikes. Victoria won seven in a row under the legendary Ken Shields from 1980-86, then won again in 1997 under his successor, the late Guy Vetrie. Coincidentally, that was the same calendar year that Smart arrived at Carleton.

As far as Smart's concerned, though, comparing him to Shields on the basis of championships ... well, that's like comparing a current chart-topper to Chuck Berry on the basis who's downloaded more on iTunes. There can only be he who did it first.

Brad Jacobs has climbed to the top of the Canadian curling mountain. (CP)

The Iceman last won a Brier for Northern Ontario when Brad Jacobs was about ready to enter this world. Just a few months after that fabled championship was etched in the books of curling history, Jacobs arrived - in June of that year - with obviously no earthly idea that he would grow up to be the man who'd ultimately end the drought that was just about to begin.

Al Hackner's 1985 win over Pat Ryan is no longer the region's last national men's curling championship. His nickname, "The Iceman" will forever be his and his alone, although you'd be forgiven if you were tempted to tap Jacobs once on each shoulder with a curling broom and dub him worthy of the title. While you're at it, a knighting of curling's gentleman, Jeff Stoughton, would also be in order.

Manitoba's Stoughton, a three-time Brier champion, wins raves again for his sportsmanship as he capped Northern Ontario's 11-4 win by performing two of his patented spin-o-ramas in the ninth end, with the outcome no longer in doubt.

Carleton celebrates after beating Lakehead 92-42 in Sunday's CIS final (Chris Roussakis for Yahoo Canada Sports)

Lakehead got Scrubbed clean by Carleton, like everyone expected.

That means in the next day or two, someone will step on the barely Bleacher Report-worthy 'let the Ravens play in the NCAA tournament' soapbox that is always pulled out in between the CIS Final 8 and that other men's basketball tournament that begins in March. It's folderol, of course. Suggesting that an entire country's season should be reduced to a play-in game demeans everything uniquely Canadian about university basketball — academics coming first, bona fide student-athletes having one more season to develop under coaches such as Carleton's Dave Smart, who have fewer restrictions on how much time they can spend tutoring players, unlike the rule-happy NCAA, and so on.

When it comes to building the CIS hoops brand, though, a 50-point blowout in the national final doesn't help. Carleton's 92-42 win over Lakehead happened since Canadian university hoops, with its 24-second shot clock, is more matchup-based than the game down south. The Ravens were simply too strong with forwards Tyson Hinz and Thomas Scrubb and guards Phil Scrubb and Clinton Springer-Williams, all of whom has now been either a CIS rookie of the year, player of the year or Final 8 MVP.

The conundrum is they are a Division I mid-major team thanks to what Smart is able to do in a strata of sport that is more about personal development than packed arenas and bigger TV deals. Some more of the latter for the Canadian game would be nice, eh? Still, here is the third-most recognizable hoops brand nationally after the NBA Raptors and Canada Basketball, and naysayers will wonder if anyone can play with them.

Lakehead senior Brendan King strains to stop Carleton's Tyson Hinz (Chris Roussakis for Yahoo! Canada Sports)

Great Groups of Dudes finish second.

Chances are, some channel-surfing knowledgeable sports fan probably happened across the CIS Final 8 championship game on Sunday and snorted after seeing a score that looked the blood-pressure reading of someone who ought to see a doctor. The Lakehead Thunderwolves ended up on the wrong end of two championship-game records — fewest points scored by a team, greatest margin of victory/defeat. Yet those who have taken the time to know this embraceable brand of ball knows the GGODs — that meme was spawned by how a former Lakehead star named Kiraan Posey once described his teammates to Globe & Mail scribe Al Maki — are winners.

Lakehead's six fifth-year seniors — CIS defensive player of the year Greg Carter, guards Ben Johnson and Joseph Jones, big men Brendan King, Yoosrie Salhia and Matthew Schmidt — helped a team that hit rock bottom in the mid-aughties finally have a breakthrough in its fourth consecutive Final 8 trip. They just didn't have the right matchups against Carleton. They didn't break their bond on a day when the bitter end lasted the whole 40 minutes.

"We started together, we finished together and we knew we had nothing left," said Jones, the heart-and-soul sixth man who had 20+-point nights on the last two Saturdays of the season when the 'Wolves won elimination games vs. two OUA teams with more talent, Windsor and Ottawa. "We gave Lakehead and Thunder Bay the best of our talent. We gave them a lot of memories over the years."

Carleton's Thomas Scrubb (right) has a shot contested by Acadia's Owen Klassen (Chris Roussakis for Yahoo Canada Sports)

Whether the Carleton Ravens wanted to play Ottawa for the national championship belongs in the strong maybe pile. Whether a Carleton-Ottawa final was needed to give the CIS Final 8 a box-office bump is a well-duh.

Attendance at the CIS Final 8 isn't as strong as it was a half-decade ago, the first time the tournament came to Scotiabank Place after a nearly quarter-century stint in Halifax. Saturday's semifinal drew an announced crowd of 5,011, less than the 6,200 who turned out on a weeknight in the middle of a cold snap in January when the schools played their annual Capital Hoops Classic doubleheader in the NHL venue.

There's many reasons for it, the first probably being Scotiabank Place itself, plus Carleton cutting down the nets on championship Sunday isn't that novel after eight championships in 10 seasons. A Carleton-Ottawa final might have moved the needle.

Naturally, the seventh-seeded Lakehead Thunderwolves scotched it by beating the Gee-Gees 66-62 on Saturday. On the latter count, it almost sounds like Ottawa being out of the picture has reduced the pressure on Carleton one game early, no disrespect to Lakehead.

Thomas Scrubb had 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting in Carleton's semifinal win Saturday (Chris Roussakis for Yahoo! Canada Sports)

Phil Scrubb is two-time men's player of the year in Canadian university basketball while it's debatable if he's even the best player in his gene pool.

The Carleton Ravens, who have only the persistent Lakehead Thunderwolves standing in the way of another CIS title, are what they are because the player of the year's brother, 6-foot-5 small forward Thomas Scrubb, might be university hoops' ultimate two-way star, terrific at each end of the floor. One sequence in the first minute of the fourth quarter of Carleton's 84-69 disassembling of Acadia on Semifinal Saturday at the CIS Final 8 at Scotiabank Place captured it well. Scrubb used his condor wingspan to nab an offensive board to get the Ravens a fresh shot clock, passed off and worked to get open for a three from the wing. The Richmond, B.C., native ended up with the quietest 20-point, five-rebound, two-block, two-steal line you could imagine, while shooting an effective 83 per cent.

Or maybe it was summed up by that always-on Carleton coaching staff noticed between the semifinal games. A montage of highlights of various all-Canadian honourees contained a Freudian slip.

"It’s funny — they were doing the all-Canadian highlights and maybe they got Phil and Tommy mixed up because they kept putting Tommy up there," Carleton coach Dave Smart said. "I said to one of my assistants, ‘it’s ironic he keeps getting put up there because he’s been our best player in the last five weeks.' "

"He’s probably our best player in the best month and he guards the other team’s best player every night," added Phil Scrubb, who had 14 of his game-high 26 points during the decisive third quarter when Carleton pulled away after Acadia's all-Canadian forward Owen Klassen wore down. "He’s stepped up for us a lot lately."

Clinton Springer-Williams played for two other teams before joining Carleton (RM Photo)

Being told he's become a complementary player is probably the best compliment Clinton Springer-Williams can receive, which might not have always been the case.

The Carleton Ravens' on-paper outlook for 2012-13 improved the moment the former Canadian university men's basketball rookie of the year decided in 2011 to transfer to the nation's capital after an unsuccessful stint in the NCAA. It gave the Ravens the guards who had won CIS top rookie honours in both 2010 and '11 with Springer-Williams and Phil Scrubb, who's since won the Mike Moser Trophy twice as national player of the year.

There was the question of how Springer-Williams would adapt from being needed to score 20 points a night when he last played in CIS to playing in Carleton's spread-the-wealth system. Long story short, Springer-Williams has left his days as a score-first gunner behind. Now he's a big cog in helping Carleton go after another CIS title against Lakehead on Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT, The Score).