Sporting Madness

It's quite the day for disciplinary stories. The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that Carleton has suspended their women's soccer team over a hazing incident. The team will not play against U of T and Ryerson this weekend, presumably forfeiting those games, and will not take the field again until the university's ongoing investigation is finished. This could be a big scandal. There may be hazing incidents I'm unaware of, but the last time I can remember an entire team being suspended was in 2005 when McGill forfeited its football season. Queen's Journal sports editors of the time James Bradshaw and Dan Robson ran an excellent piece on the matter, looking at the wider issue of hazing. Of course, that also wound up being the year featuring the Windsor Spitfires' hazing scandal and the fight between Steve Downie and Akim Aliu . The two incidents, coming so close together, turned into a big national story and put a spotlight on hazing in sports. Over time, that s...

This one's for all the marbles! It's the national championship game, live from Scotiabank Place. The top-ranked Carleton Ravens are taking on the third-seeded UBC Thunderbirds. Join in the live blog below! Carleton - UBC live blog

The final game of the day sees the top-seeded Carleton Ravens take on the wild-card St. Francis Xavier X-Men. Join the live blog below! Carleton - St. F.X. live blog

Just a quick post to let all CIS hoops fans know that Neate will be live-blogging tonight's Capital Hoops Classic [ universitysport.ca ] over at The CIS Blog , featuring the No. 1 Carleton Ravens and the No. 2 Ottawa Gee-Gees on the men's side and both schools' 10-5 women's teams in the opener. I saw both schools' men's and women's teams play Queen's last weekend, and I was rather impressed with all of them (plus, that Queen's - Carleton women's game had the craziest ending I've ever seen ). Thus, we should be in for two very good games tonight. For supplementary coverage to go with the live blog, you can watch webcasts of both games at Streaming Sports Network Canada 's site or watch them on TV on The Score .

Breaking down Sunday night's basketball game between the Gaels and the University at Buffalo Bulls (who have a surprisingly close name to that other Buffalo team invading Canada for pre-season games)... The score: 88-61, Buffalo. How I saw it: In person. The Good: Mitch Leger: Leger had his fourth consecutive game with over 20 points, racking up 23 points (on 10 of 15 shooting from the field) and nine rebounds (two offensive) in 28 minutes of action. He scored nine of Queen's first 11 points, but his effectiveness went down after Buffalo started to double-team him. I talked with Buffalo head coach Reggie Witherspoon afterwards, and he said he didn't have much information on individual Queen's players before the match, so they weren't particularly prepared for Leger. Once he started lighting them up, though, Buffalo made the adjustment to a double-team on Leger in the post and challenged the Gaels' other shooters to beat them. Leger was still somewhat effect...

Queen's principal Dr. Karen Hitchcock announced her resignation earlier today, which came on the heels of some severe criticism of her by student leaders , professors , and even our own paper . It's no secret that I haven't been the biggest Hitchcock fan, especially given her treatment of the athletics review. Back in June, three months after the review's initial release date, she wouldn't even speak to our paper about why it was delayed or when it could be expected out. Instead, we got a statement from one of her plethora of spokespeople that she'd been considering it for a month and would release it in the near future. Well, that near future turned out to be nearer than expected: the day after we went to press, she suddenly released the review (perhaps prompted by our editorial criticizing the delay, or perhaps with the knowledge that any criticism of it would be delayed until our next print issue a month later, as we operate on a slower schedule in the s...

A fantastic American national championship game last night saw the University of Kansas Jayhawks claim their first championship since 1988 with a 75-68 overtime win over the University of Memphis Tigers. Funnily enough, current assistant coach Danny Manning was the star of that Kansas team 20 years ago, which was appropriately known as "Danny and the Miracles" and pulled off a stunning upset of Oklahoma to claim the title. It was a great run for this year's Jayhawks, but they didn't go without their struggles, almost losing to Cinderella team Davidson in the Elite Eight when the Wildcats' Jason Richards missed a crucial shot at the buzzer . For much of last night, it looked like the Jayhawks would come up short again, especially when they were nine points down with just over two minutes left. They went on an incredible late run, though, and forced overtime off a tremendous contested three from Mario Chalmers with only 2.1 seconds left. That Chalmers shot deserv...

Well, Barnsley finally met their match. After seeing off both Arsenal and Liverpool, their magical FA Cup run came to an end at the hands of fellow Championship strugglers Cardiff City. A ninth-minute goal from midfielder Joe Ledley, playing for his hometown side, proved to be the difference between the two sides: Cardiff created many more chances, but couldn't tack on an insurance marker. Barnsley had their own chances, though, particularly when Kayode Odejayi broke in alone but could only find the side of the net in what Soccernet described as "quite possibly the worst miss seen at the new Wembley". In the end, Cardiff was deserving of the win and a berth in next month's final against Portsmouth. What's interesting is how Barnsley cranked it up to beat top-flight sides like Arsenal and Liverpool, but couldn't seem to do the same against a club from their own league. Perhaps it's the downside of an upset: all of a sudden, the expectations are weighing on...

Bigger than the Giants and Patriots. More remarkable than the Edmonton Oilers' Cinderella run to the Stanley Cup Finals. More unprecedented than the seventh-seeded Winnipeg Wesmen knocking off the undefeated McMaster Marauders. Even more unexpected than Barnsley knocking off Liverpool and Manchester United. There's nothing that's happened yet this century that can compare to the Acadia Axemen's improbable, almost unbelievable 82-80 double overtime upset of the Carleton Ravens tonight in the CIS men's basketball championships. They'll go on to face Brock tomorrow in a final no one would have predicted. As Streaming Sports Network Canada's Mark Masters noted on their webcast, "This is a game that will go down in the history books as one of the best all-time games in national history." I'd go even beyond that. Carleton has been one of the most dominant programs in any sport ever, winning the last five national championships, going undefeated in OU...

In the final installment of Campus Corner for this week, here's my thoughts on the hockey teams. First, the men's team pulled off a very nice come-from-behind victory against RMC on Wednesday: the Journal was well-represented at the match, with Mike, Josh and myself all making the cross-town trip to Constantine Arena. I mentioned in a comment on Neate's blog earlier that I wasn't too impressed with the arena: to me, it felt way too small and cramped (the section we were sitting in was packed to the brim, and there were constantly people moving around looking for seats). Also, the penalty boxes weren't glassed in, which I haven't seen in a hockey rink before, and the whole arena's covered by white netting, making visibility pretty limited. Others think differently, though. Anyways, on the game itself: it was a pretty impressive performance from the Gaels. What amazed me the most was one particular coaching decision on the part of Brett Gibson. Pat Doyle was ...

The men's basketball team faces a sharp contrast this weekend. Tonight, they play 14-0 Carleton, the consensus No.1 team in the country (according to the CIS poll, cishoops.ca , and the RPI rankings , which agree on very little apart from Carleton). Tomorrow night, they play a polar opposite team in the 0-14 RMC Paladins (as an aside, why does RMC even bother keeping volleyball and basketball teams? They haven't won a game in either gender in either sport this year, so they're worse than the Miami Dolphins, which is pretty sad). Tonight's Carleton game should be quite interesting. As Neate Sager noted on The CIS Blog , Carleton's suffering from a flu bug . That, combined with the possibility that the Ravens might overlook tonight's match in preparation for tomorrow's Capital Hoops Classic against Ottawa before 10,000 fans at Scotiabank Place, should at least give the Gaels a slim chance to my way of thinking. Unfortunately, head coach Rob Smart doesn't...