Friday 21 September 2007

Varsity Blues, Carleton, Ottawa Updates

The Varsity Blues Men's Basketball team have finalized their roster for the 07-08 season by adding 6'3 freshman “walk on” Joeseph Munn from Jarvis High School. Munn impressed coaches at the Open Try outs with his size, strength and ability to shoot the ball from any range. “Joeseph is somebody that we are thinking about for the long term. We aren't expecting a lot from him straight away as he is still raw but he does have huge potential. Once he spends some time in our program and understands our system, along with making the nessacary adjustments to his game in order to compete at the CIS level he should have a good future here” commented Varsity Blues Head Coach Mike Katz. Joesph is a bigger bodied wing who can rebound and shoot the 3. He can guard bigger players and in time should be able to play anywhere from the 2 to the 4 spots. Munn played at Jarvis High School with current Varsity Blue Justin Holmes, an athletic wing who is looking to make an impact after coming off a red-shirt season last year. Here is another piece about 2 other new Blues from the Varsity Blues web site Blues add Magalas and Glisic

The Blues also added to their coaching staff as former Blues and McMaster Marauders star Ben Katz (pictured) will take on the role of assistant coach and academic supervisor for the Blues. Katz replaces assistant coach Tom Lytle who returned back to the U.S to take a high school Head Coaching position. Katz's addition rounds out aruguably the deepest coaching staff in the CIS. This staff includes Coach Katz's long time assistant and former Seneca head coach Rick Dilena, former UBC player and Raptors Basketball Development Co-ordinator Jama Mahalela and former Australian professional and U.S college assistant coach Andrew Summerville. “It is a pleasure to have Ben join our staff. He has a great understanding of what we are trying to do and he gives us the advantage of being able to look at things from a player's perspective” added Coach Katz. Ben will also over see the Academic progress of the Blues players and help with individual player work outs with an emphasis on perimeter shooting. Ben, along with Jama Mahalela are the co-founders of “Concrete Hoops” an international basketball camp that is run both here in Toronto and in Mahalela's home country of Swaziland.

The five-time defending CIS champion Carleton Ravens, hosts of the next 3 CIS Final Eight National championships, are busy preparing for a challenging pre-season which includes the annual House-Laughton Invitational (Guelph, Dalhousie, UQAM visit), a trip to Victoria which includes a rematch of last season's CIS championship game against Brandon and then a three game tour of the Big East/ACC with games at Louisville in famed Freedom Hall, at Providence and at Boston College. Both the Cardinals and Eagles are likely to be Top 20 teams in NCAA Division 1 this season. This season's edition of the Ravens may be the deepest and talented of any of the previous five National Champions with size, perimeter shooting, toughness and plenty of talent one through twelve. With 7 of the projected main 12 players in their fourth or fifth seasons, this group also represents one of the most experienced teams in the CIS with 6'4" Ryan Bell, 6'5" Jean-Emmanuel Jean-Marie, 6'7" Aaron Doornekamp, 6'2" Stuart Turnbull and 6'3" Rob Saunders being undefeated at the Nationals during their career. The Ravens have one key injury currently as 5'10" sophomore point guard Michael Kenny, who came on strong toward the end of last season despite battling various ailments, unfortunately has been plagued with a bad ankle for which he just had an MRI. Based on the returning talent and their play over the Labour Day weekend, the Ravens look like Canada's top team once again.

The Ottawa Gee-Gees had a pleasant surprise through their tryout period as 6'2" Bojan Dodik from Ottawa Sir Robert Borden has been selected to the Gee-Gees roster. Dodik has shown tremendous court awareness and basketball intelligence with the added ability to knock down perimeter shots. Dodik was rated as the #10 shooting guard in Ontario by Jim Thomas in the All-Ontario Scouting Service Class of 2007 Top 50 player rankings and gives Ottawa a tough guard who knows how to play. Dodik is a veteran of the Ottawa Guardsman club program.

Another article on Will Njoku's new post as Athletic Director at Atlantic Baptist University, this time by Chad Lucas of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald Njoku takes over as AD at ABU

2 comments:

Unknown said...

great blog, really appreciate all the work you do spreading the word about ball in this country.
just a thought, i would be thrilled if you put together an entry about some of the Canadians entering NCAA D1 this year, as well as some of the potential prospects from the 08/09/10 classes. keep up the awesome work.

Mark Wacyk said...

Thanks for the comments; regarding Canadians entering NCAA D1 and other news not directly related to Canadian university basketball, there are a number of others who compile and comment on this information much better than I do including Jim Thomas and Barry Hayes who follow the high school scene much closer than I do. www.hooplife.ca has a number of recruiting articles that talk to Canadians in the NCAA; also check out http://www.thehoop-la.com/home.php