St. Clair Among Final 8 at Men’s Basketball National Championship

Etobicoke, ON – The St. Clair College Men's Basketball team is in exclusive company this week as part of the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association National Championship being hosted at Humber College in Etobicoke March 25-27.  The Saints last competed at the Men's Basketball National level in 1980. 

St. Clair will open their tournament against Dawson College (Montreal, QC) who was the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec Silver medalist after a 13-2 regular season record and finished as the 6^th ranked team in the country.  The Blues are led by 6'3" shooting guard Renoldo Robinson who tops his team in nearly every statistical category while sporting a 23.9 points per game average to go with 7.3 rebounds and 3.9 assists per contest. 

The OCAA Silver medalist Saints are led by David Gomez Jr. (Pontiac, Michigan) who is a 3-time OCAA All-Star selection and was named a CCAA All-Canadian this past season after scoring 21.8 points per game which ranked 7^th provincially.  Jalen Harmon (Ypsilanti, MI) was an OCAA West Division 2^nd Team All-Star selection and Chad Vincent-Simon (Scarborough, ON) was named an OCAA Championship All-Star team member with both players averaging 14.1 points per game in the regular season for St. Clair.  The Saints finished the season rated 15^th nationally.

St. Clair will tip at 3:00pm on Friday against Dawson at the Humber College Athletic Centre North Campus gymnasium. 

Prior to that the Pacific Western Athletic Association Champion Vancouver Island University (Nanaimo, BC) will tip at 1:00pm against the Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Association Champion Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax, NS).  The VIU Mariners were the nation's top ranked team all year and compiled a perfect 17-0 record while the MSVU Mystics struggled to a 4-8 regular season but used a miracle playoff run to the ACAA title. 

OCAA Champion and host Humber will face the Pac-West runner-up Capilano University Blues (North Vancouver, BC) at 6:00pm followed by Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference Champion Southern Alberta Institute of Technology Trojans against the RSEQ Champion Les Filons du Cégep de Thetford at 8:00pm.  Humber (9-0) was undefeated this season finishing the year ranked 3^rd in Canada with Thetford (10-0, #4), SAIT (14-2, 5^th) and Capilano (10-6, 11^th) also making the national ratings.

Friday's quarterfinal matchups will lead to semi-finals on Saturday with a National Champion being crowned Sunday evening in the Gold Medal game that is slated to begin at 7:30pm.

View all CCAA National Championship information on the tournament website at https://www.ccaa.ca/sports/mbkb/championship/index and all games will be lived streamed at https://portal.stretchinternet.com/ccaasportsacsc/

See below the entire tournament schedule. 

Fri, March 25^th

MSVU Mystics vs. VIU Mariners            1:00 PM EDT           Match 1 - ¼ Final

St. Clair Saints vs. Dawson Blues         3:00 PM EDT          Match 2 - ¼ Final

Capilano Blues vs. Humber Hawks         6:00 PM EDT          Match 3 - ¼ Final

SAIT Trojans vs. Filons du Thetford        8:00 PM EDT          Match 4 – ¼ Final

Sat, March 26^th

Loser Match 1 vs. Loser Match 2           1:00 PM EDT          Match 5 - Bronze ¼ Final

Loser Match 3 vs. Loser Match 4           3:00 PM EDT          Match 6 - Bronze ¼ Final

Winner Match 1 vs. Winner Match 2       6:00 PM EDT          Match 7 - Semi-final

Winner Match 3 vs. Winner Match 4       8:00 PM EDT          Match 8 - Semi-final

Sun, March 27^th

Winner Match 6 vs. Loser Match 7          10:00 AM EDT          Match 9 - Bronze semi-final

Winner Match 5 vs. Loser Match 8          12:00 PM EDT          Match 10 - Bronze semi-final

Winner Match 9 vs. Winner Match 10     5:00 PM EDT          Bronze Medal Match

Winner Match 7 vs. Winner Match 8       7:30 PM EDT          Championship Final