For Carleton and Dave Smart, Ottawa being out changes everything at CIS Final 8

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.

"If Lakehead beats us, they’re going to beat us at our very best," said Carleton coach Dave Smart. "To be very frank, Ottawa might have beat us not at our best just because I think our guys... our guys are nice guys. They would have been really worried about... they would have been trying not necessarily to win a national championship, but trying not to lose it to Ottawa.

"I feel bad for Ottawa because they've been playing so well. But from my perspective, I know my guys will be at least out trying to win. If Lakehead beats us, which they could because they're a good team, it'll be because they beat us on a day we were being aggressive."

"Beating a team that good four times — we're not idiots," Smart added. "We know that's tough. They [Ottawa] outplayed us two out of three times. The only time we outplayed them was last Saturday [in the OUA Wilson Cup]. It was a three-point game, but we kind of threw it away, we were up 14. Our guys kind of knew they were the favourites going into the game. With Lakehead, these guys have been through getting their heads handed to them by Lakehead [which beat Carleton in the 2011 Wilson Cup and the 2009-10 regular season]."

'Would have liked to play Ottawa again'

Carleton, now 30-1 in CIS play, had its only three single-digit wins against Ottawa. In constrast, it handled Lakehead 72-51 eight days ago in the OUA semifinal and thumped the Thunderwolves 94-53 in November. Those scorelines are probably better motivational fodder for Lakehead coach Scott Morrison — everyone's expecting you to lose by 30, or something like that — than anything Carleton had to say on Saturday night.

Small forward Thomas Scrubb's comments about the matchup were revealing.

"Personally, I would have liked to play Ottawa again because they’ve definitely been our toughest challenge," said Scrubb, who had 20 points while his younger brother Phil Scrubb hooped a game-high 26. "We know Lakehead. They’ve got five seasoned guys. They’re going to give everything they have. In terms of intensity, it’s going to be as good as there is."

Before any Lakehead folk get upset, though, note that the elder Scrubb omitted the operative phrase in the final. That's good parsing.

For 38 minutes and 40 seconds on Saturday, Ottawa outscored Lakehead. In an 80-second span Lakehead got successive threes from sixth man Joseph Jones (22 points) and then two hoop-and-the-harm driving layups through heavy traffic in the lane for an 11-0 run to opened a 60-53 lead with 4:50 left. One of those layups had more English on it than anything the great northwestern Ontario curler Al Hackner threw in his heyday.

Ottawa, whose leading scorer Johnny Berhanemeskel was hounded into a 1-for-13, two-point day, could only get as close as two points after that deluge.

"I thought we could hang on until the TV timeout [with five minutes left in the quarter]," explained Ottawa coach James Derouin. "I knew we were going to make one more run and I wanted to keep all of my [three second-half] timeouts. I thought long and hard about burning one. It’s really tough with the TV timeouts to burn one at the 5:30 mark. They just made two or three incredible and-ones and one incredible three [by Joseph Jones].

"In hindsight, could I have burned a timeout? That’s probably something I’ll wrestle with all summer."

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet. Please address any questions, comments or concerns to btnblog@yahoo.ca.