How the Ryerson Rams became one of Canada's best university basketball teams

Vlad Matevski remembers the worst of it.

Long before Ryerson was getting set to host the CIS Final 8 men’s basketball tournament for the first time in the school’s history, Matevski spent four seasons on the court with the Rams.

Wins didn’t come often back then.

Over his four-year playing career between 2001-2005 the Rams went a combined 23-65 and in his final two seasons they won just one game.

“It was totally a disaster from a basketball standpoint and an organizational standpoint,” Matevski recalled in a phone interview recently. “I came from a different basketball culture [in Macedonia] – one of the [world’s] top basketball nations – and coming here it was really disorganized. It was bad. It wasn’t done properly.”

That said, he feels the most frustrating part of his time with the Rams was knowing that things could have been different had the right person been put in place to lead the program.

“I always believed, regardless of who it was, if somebody came in with a plan and a strategy and incorporated a culture and system it would have been done well,” he said.

Five years after Matevski graduated, Roy Rana was hired after nearly a decade of coaching one of Toronto’s top high school hoops teams at Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute. Under his leadership, the Rams have transformed into one of the top team’s in Ontario and find themselves a legitimate contender for a national title.

Beginning Thursday, the Rams, who finished the regular season with a 17-2 record, will have the chance to make school history when they tip off against the No. 2-ranked Windsor Lancers at the Mattamy Athletic Centre. A win would guarantee Ryerson a spot in the CIS championship semifinals for the first time ever.

“[These players] have done something special for our university and for our basketball program and I take great pride in that,” Rana said. “To win a national championship on your home court, that doesn’t happen often at any level in any sport so that opportunity is an exciting one.”

Ryerson’s transformation from perennial basement dweller into a top university basketball programs didn’t happen overnight.

Rana remembers his first meeting with his players heading into the 2009-2010 season when they expressed their goal of being the best university team in the country.

“Unfortunately we didn’t really have the structure in place to make that a reality,” Rana said.

Back then the Rams were a team that leaned heavily on their star Boris Bakovic, who now sits No. 1 all-time in total points scored by a CIS player.

The team Rana has built over his five-plus years on the job relies far more on the performance of the group as a whole.

“I think that’s been indicative of my career when I was a high school coach at Eastern [Commerce Collegiate Institute] we always had multiple guys who would score,” Rana said.

“That first year when I took over the [Ryerson] program, I got that job very late so it really wasn’t a team of kids I had recruited, they were kids that were holdovers, great kids and I enjoyed coaching them, but it took time to build the roster I wanted.”

The first batch of freshman he played a part in recruiting a year later, which includes point guard Jahmal Jones, who led the team in scoring this season averaging 17.2 points per game. Forward Bjorn Michaelsen and guard Jordon Gauthier are now fifth-year seniors, and have been key cogs for Rana over the course of their CIS careers.

“We were very fortunate to get the three seniors that we did; they’ve had a huge impact on the program,” Rana said. “If we don’t have those three, I’m not sure we’re talking on the phone right now.”

He’s also aware that losing three key seniors presents a brand new challenge for the program: finding a way to sustain a certain level of quality within the program when key players graduate.

While acquiring top talent out of high school is likely the best way to do so, Rana admits that even with the program’s success over the last few years and the selling feature of being able to play in a state-of-the-art facility, recruiting is difficult.

“I think it’s becoming easier to get into the conversation with players, but not necessarily any easier to make sure that they come,” he said. “Coaches are working a lot harder on the recruiting trail and being a lot more creative in their recruiting. I think are our success has opened up a lot of doors, but it’s still a tough business.”

Ten years after graduating, Matevski still has a close connection to Ryerson. He still keeps tabs on the team, goes out to as many games as he can and actually works on the court with a handful of Rams players during the year. In the offseason, he also works with players as part of the on-court development program he runs in Toronto called Real Basketball Training.

He may not have many positive basketball memories to look back on, but he respects what Rana has been able to build and takes pride in the fact that he’s a Ryerson alumnus.

“What Roy [Rana] did was really put a structure and a culture into the program . . . which is obviously great for Ryerson,” he said.

“Ryerson is always going to be in my heart.”