Gee-Gees men hold 13-game winning streak, women seven
While it doesn’t boast the history — and morning pre-game tradition — of its sister Panda Game, Capital Hoops is a Canadian university sporting spectacle in its own right. 2025’s edition will go Friday at TD Place in front of thousands of fans.
The Gee-Gees and Ravens men’s basketball teams have competed once-a-winter since 2007; the women since 2008. In 2015, a U SPORTS basketball attendance record was set while the game was still held at the Canadian Tire Centre, with 10,780 fans in attendance.
Before last year, the Carleton Ravens men hadn’t missed a national championship Final 8 since 2002. In that 20-year span at the Final 8, the Ravens had won a national championship a staggering 17 times.
The Gee-Gees men, meanwhile, are still chasing that ever-elusive national championship. The men are coming off back-to-back bronze medals and have made the Final 8 seven times since James Derouin took over as the program’s head coach in 2010.
The Ravens women are no slouches either, and are coming off back-to-back national championships under head coach Dani Sinclair. The Gee-Gees haven’t been to the big dance since 2019.
But this game isn’t particularly that important because of the history and national championships in seasons past from the top-level programs involved. It’s important because these four teams are all in the national top-10 rankings, and threats to win a national championship this season.
The Gee-Gees men have been surging since fifth-year Dragan Stajic and third-year Khalifa Koulamallah joined the team off the injured reserve before Christmas and enter Friday holding a 13-game win streak that has shot them to third in the country (or second, depending on who you ask).
The Carleton men are still hanging around at sixth in the national rankings despite upset losses to Ontario Tech and TMU. They have struggled against top-10 opponents this year too, dropping their games to the Gee-Gees and the #10 Lakehead Thunderwolves.
The Gee-Gees women are holding a seven-game win streak of their own, but will enter TD Place at fourth in the country, attempting to become to first team to hand the nationally top ranked 19-0 Ravens a loss this season.
How do the men win Friday?
If I had to handicap them, the men enter as solid favourites to win their fourth game in a row against the Ravens (dating back to last year’s Bytown Battle.) They’re 17-2, holding a 13-game win streak.
Four of their starters are averaging double-digits points on the season, while their fifth (Brock Newton) is knocking on the door at 9.2 — and was a Second Team All-Canadian last year.
This offseason, the team traded the graduating Kevin Otoo for NCAA transfer Ankit Choudhary while strengthening their bench. Choudhary has torched defences all season with spot-up daggers, pull-up bombs, transition heat checks, and even half-court buzzer beaters on his way to draining the most threes in the entire country.
The first three players off that bench on Friday — Owen Kenney, Khalifa Koulamallah, and Matt Smith — could start on anywhere between a majority to a handful of teams in the division. They don’t just have skill. They have depth, and they can beat you in endless ways.
Stajic has been on fire in his final season in garnet and grey, and ranks eighth in the country with a 47.8 clip from deep. Kenney (37.1 per cent) and Koulamallah (34.3 per cent) are lockdown shooters, while improved shooting from Jacques-Mélaine Guemeta (31.7 per cent) Justin Ndjock-Tadjore (30 per cent) have led the team a 34.1 mark overall, a seven-point increase over last year that places them third in the conference.
Expect a similar scoring game (71-62) to the last time they met and last Capital Hoops (71-61). The Gee-Gees and Ravens have the two best defences in the conference.
A tough task for the women: an undefeated Ravens team
The women, meanwhile, seemingly have a tougher task. The Ravens’ women enter 19-0 on the season and are coming off back-to-back national championships. But enter a sputtering Ravens team.
Sputtering, you ask? How can you be the undefeated, two-time reigning national champions and be sputtering? Let’s go back to last weekend. The Gee-Gees women took down Queen’s 60-53 on Friday night and then made mincemeat of the 1-14 Ontario Tech Ridgebacks a day later, blowing them out 111-42.
Carleton similarly defeated Queen’s by a score of 72-63 on Saturday, but on Friday night, they showed weakness. Against those same Ridgebacks, they won by just fifteen points, compared to the Gee-Gees’ 69.
Watch your loose change around Szczokin
Fifth-year Ravens guard Dorcas Buisa turned the ball over 16 times combined in those two games — accounting for nine of the team’s 30 total turnovers against Ontario Tech, and seven of the team’s 14 total against Queen’s.
I went back and watched every single one of those turnovers to try to figure out what happened and be fair to Buisa, an incredible player who set the Ravens program points record in November with 38 points in a win over the Guelph Gryphons.
Of the first nine, one was wrongly accredited and three were low-stakes plays that shouldn’t count against her, including a keep-in effort and a ball she dived on the ground for. But I saw the other five, and apparently Queen’s did too.
On Saturday, Buisa was forced into four turnovers in the first five minutes before being subbed off, though she would come back soon after and end up playing 36 minutes. It all really didn’t matter in the end, and her game-high 26 points were a huge reason the Ravens extended their win streak.
Now of course, Buisa is allowed to have a bad weekend handling the ball. It happens. Even the best athletes are human; she’ll come back better, and you can bet that Ravens head coach Dani Sinclair will have her roster prepared for TD Place.
But enter Natsuki Szczokin, the 5’6” Gee-Gees point guard. Quick as a dart and with hands like a pickpocket, Szczokin has scooped, clawed, batted, and swatted her way to 79 steals in 19 games this year, leading the country in both total steals and steals per game.
The Barrie native is enjoying a final season for the ages. By picking up just five more steals in the team’s final three games, she’ll join former backcourt partner Ariane Saumure on the country’s top 10 single-season steals leaderboard.
Szczokin is hungry. “I think it being my last year and knowing it’s my last few games, it’s really put a different perspective on me,” she said after recording a career-high 30 points in the Gee-Gees’ win over the Nipissing Lakers on Jan. 25.
“It does have an affect on how I play. I think it definitely shows,” she continued. There’s no bigger stage than Capital Hoops, and with Szczokin’s collegiate career winding down — and her performance trending up — she’s sure to make the most out of it on Friday night and be an X-factor on both ends of the floor.
You don’t rack up a 17-2 season record by being a one-trick pony though. The Gee-Gees also rely on Allie McCarthy, a lockdown shooter with handles; Alissa Provo, Szczokin’s calm and collected backcourt partner who is in her own right a great defender; and the frontcourt duo of Emily Payne and Victoria Brideau, who both stand well over six feet tall and have shooting touches.
Off the bench, six-footer Renée Paquette backs up the bigs, the lengthy Enora Touloute plays wing, guard Ivany Rheault-Langué is always prone to make her way onto a highlight reel, while second-year Bailey Russell leads the conference in three-point shooting, sitting at a round 40 per cent on the season heading into Friday.
The action begins with the women at 6 p.m. on Friday, while the men will follow at 8 p.m. Tickets are still available, and if you’re out of town, you can stream the game at OUA.TV.
