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Carleton-Ottawa cross-town CIS final an unprecedented matchup, but will crowd size and casual-fan support reflect it?

Two teams from one city hooking up for the W.P. McGee Trophy has never happened before in Canadian university men's basketball annals, meaning sleep is overrated.

With daylight savings time beginning Saturday night and the CIS Final 8 championship game tipping off at 2 p.m. ET at Sportsnet 360's request, that meant the Ottawa Gee-Gees will only have about 12½ hours of R&R between their 78-70 semifinal win over the Victoria Vikes and a date with destiny vs. the rival Carleton Ravens, who downed Alberta 79-55. Whether the short window is conducive to optimum performance on the parquet at Canadian Tire Centre remains to be seen, but the matchup is without precedent. So no need to make excuses about an early start, even though No. 2 seed Carleton will get a couple extra hours' rest and the pace-pushing top-seeded Gee-Gees had the tighter turnaround.

"This is what I've been waiting all season for, it's nationals and Ottawa versus Carleton," said Ottawa's sophomore combo forward Caleb Agada, whose 12 points and 10 rebounds helped the Gee-Gees hang in against a Victoria front line that includes 6-foot-10 Chris McLaughlin, who was valiant with 19 points before fouling out late.

"This is what we've been waiting for. My energy is the highest it could possibly be."

It's been 36 years — longer than some of the coaches in Sunday's tilt have been alive — since two teams from such close proximity met in the national final. Back in 1978 in Halifax, the hometown Saint Mary's Huskies beat Atlantic conference rival Acadia, from nearly Wolfville, N.S., 99-91. That contest, still remembered vividly down east by fans of a certain vintage, drew more than 11,000 fans.

"There's a great rivalry between the teams and having them play in a national final is certainly going to be good for the city of Ottawa, and probably create some interest in general," said Vikes coach Craig Beaucamp. "It hasn't happened before and they already have a rivalry. They've had some big games here in the regular season, but one for all the marbles after they've just knocked off Carleton recently should be a hell of a game."

'Everybody should be out'

Times have changed, with Canadian Interuniversity Sport often struggling to keep a toehold in a crowded sports media landscape. The announced attendance on Saturday at the Canadian Tire Centre was 5,993 as Carleton and Ottawa, as expected, advanced by beating Canada West's best. There's also the obvious storyline that the Gee-Gees ended Carleton's 55-game CIS win streak during the last iteration of the Canal War with a 78-77 win during the OUA Wilson Cup final. If those storylines don't entice 10,000 people to turn out on Sunday, then it's time to ask some serious questions.

"If anybody watched that Wilson Cup final — if not, YouTube it — it should draw a few more fans," said Ottawa coach James Derouin, who saw his club's 18-point first-half lead shrink to two early in the fourth quarter before Johnny Berhanemeskel (24 points, eight rebounds) hit some big buckets to put Victoria away. "Look, this is what we've been waiting for. Ottawa is hosting the national championships, you've got Carleton versus Ottawa in the national championship final. On a Sunday afternoon what else could you have to do? No NFL, right? Everybody should be out. This should be a great tournament final [Sunday]."

Carleton, under the leadership of then-director of athletics Drew Love, was the first to push the envelope with the profile and scope of a university program. In 1999, Carleton folded its football team to focus on hoops — the Ottawa Sun wrote at the time that it would set the university back 20 years, you could look it up — and installed the driven Smart as head coach. The Ravens reached the Final 8 in Smart's second year and won it all in his fourth. And his fifth, and sixth, and well you get the idea. The line of succession in floor leadership — Smart might rely more on the brother-act backcourt of Phil and Thomas Scrubb more physically than he did on Osvaldo Jeanty during the 2003-07 five-titles-in-a-row era, but less so emotionally — has been nearly unbroken.

Ottawa was a football school with a basketball problem at the turn of the century when David DeAveiro was hired. Over a decade, DeAveiro took Ottawa as far as a national semifinal in 2007 (ending a season that included beating the Ravens in front of 9,730 in the inaugural Capital Hoops Classic). Over his four seasons, Derouin has given the garnet and grey a makeover into a running team.

Whether the Gee-Gees have enough in the tank to go four quarters with the Ravens on Sunday is tough to say. The idea that they can should create some casual-fan interest. The way Smart's and Derouin's team embody two different hoops world views offers a lot for the hardcore hoops fans.

"They're just different, and I think they think they match up well to each other but they're just different teams," said McMaster coach Amos Connolly, whose Marauders played each team in their first games of the Wilson Cup and Final 8. "Carleton is very methodical and I don't mean that in a bad way. They know how to pick you apart. Any mistake you make they know the read and they hit you on it. You can see it develop as a coach and you feel for the guys on the floor because you see they're a second late getting there. Ottawa on the other hand is just a high-octane attack. They're going to get more shots, they're going to get more possessions. Their deal is they'll just have more of those and it will all work out."

Along with that Acadia-Saint Mary's joust in '78, the only other final that could be termed a backyard brawl was in 1991, when the London, Ont.-based Western Mustangs topped their OUA West pals from Guelph 78-69 in Halifax. Point being, it's a special occasion, or at least that's how it looks to those who really invest the time.

"It's just a great feeling to know that you're a part of it and you worked so hard and to see your hard work pay off as a team," Berhanemeskel said. "It's a great moment to be there, to share the moment with your team that you sacrificed so much with and worked so hard with."

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.