At home, after the game, James Derouin found himself reflecting on the fates of the men who first walked on the Moon. Men like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstong, who accomplished something seemingly impossible, and then came back to Earth and had to figure out what to do next.
Aldrin spent much of the next couple of decades drunk, bottoming out as a failed Cadillac salesman. Armstrong essentially went into hiding, living a quiet life, sheltered from the glare of celebrity on a farm in rural Ohio.
For Derouin this is vaguely what it felt like when the Ottawa Gee-Gees finally beat the Carleton Ravens, in Ottawa, at home on Jan. 10, with fifth-year senior Johnny Berhanemeskel hitting the winning basket, as has become his custom.
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A year earlier Ottawa had beaten Carleton for the OUA title in Toronto, but the Gee-Gees hadn’t won against their constant rivals in the city they share since 2007, and now a gym full of fans had witnessed them draw blood from the dragon. And yet after the biggest win of his career the normally ebullient Derouin, the 39-year-old who turned the Gee-Gees into the second-best program in Canadian basketball behind their crosstown rivals, was at a loss.
“I came home that Saturday and I was having a really hard time being motivated,” he said over the phone in advance of the ArcelorMittal Dofasco CIS Final 8 at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre, which begins on Thursday. “It was five years in the making to beat Carleton in front of a sold-out crowd at home. You stop and you think: what a marathon to get to this point. We finally did it and I was like: ‘Now what?’
“You think about those guys who walk on the Moon that never recovered because they never accomplished anything else in their life that would compare to it. It’s an awful analogy, but it kind of felt like that. Finally you’re like, ‘I have to snap out of this, we have half a season left,’ but it hit me hard.”
The dynasty Dave Smart has built at Carleton is properly celebrated as the greatest achievement in Canadian university basketball history and arguably the greatest in any sport. This weekend in Toronto, Smart and the Ravens (26-2), led by fifth-year All-Canadians Phil and Thomas Scrubb, are the No.1 seed yet again. They’re gunning for their fifth-consecutive W.P. McGee trophy and their 11th in the last 13 years—a period in which they’ve lost only 12 regular-season games.
Nowhere does the weight of Carleton’s sustained excellence feel heavier than at the University of Ottawa. Under Derouin the Gee-Gees (29-2) have made it to three straight Final 8 tournaments, winning bronze two years ago and silver last year when Carleton avenged their OUA Cup loss in the national-championship game.
But as good as they are, Ottawa has never been better than second in their hometown.
“It can drive you crazy,” says Derouin of life in the Ravens’ shadow. “You pull up to a gas station or talk to someone who hears you’re a coach and the first thing they say is ‘You coach all those championship teams?’ And you’re like, ‘No, I coach the other team.’”
Derouin makes no bones about it: Since he took the Ottawa job in 2010 everything else that could matter in CIS basketball was put aside for the only thing that did matter: Beating Carleton.
“You get to the point where when you’re winning you’re not happy because you’re not winning by enough points,” he says. “It can drive you crazy, no doubt about it. We’re 64-and-whatever the last two years and still feeling like you’re in second place.“
If beating Carleton was the task, the question was how?
Very quickly part of the strategy became obvious: copy them.
Like Carleton, Ottawa became a 12-month-a-year program. In season, players do individual skill workouts on top of regular practice. And in the off-season players stay in town to continue those workouts, as well as lift and scrimmage. Much of it is supervised by Derouin himself, and all of it is something Carleton had been doing for years.
“Dave was an innovator,” says Derouin. “He was ahead of his time that way. That’s where greatness comes from, being ahead of the curve and using that to your advantage.”
On the floor many of the Ravens’ traits are evident in the Gee-Gees’ game as both teams favour ball-screen-heavy offences, attack from multiple points on the floor and shoot the three efficiently. The Gee-Gees lead the CIS in scoring—the Ravens are third. The Ravens are the stingiest defense in the country—the Gee-Gees are seventh.
But there was one area in which Derouin quickly realized that he had to carve his own path. He could aspire to beat Smart, but he couldn’t do it while recreating a facsimile of the famously intense, taciturn and occasionally volcanic man himself. The Ravens’ bench boss is so demanding of himself and his players that he candidly admits that playing for him is a little bit like joining the marines: It’s not for everyone.
“You can’t out-Dave Dave,” says Derouin. “You just can’t. I need to sleep.”
For him that means that while remaining an unabashed basketball nut, he prides himself on being a kinder, gentler basketball nut.
“I just believe that there is more than one way to win,” he says. “Dave’s way has been extremely successful… But you know what? There were championship teams before there was Coach Smart. Other teams have won with other styles.
“We allow our kids to have a little more personality, to express themselves and play a looser style. I like kids to enjoy the game. I have a lot of conversations with our players, and they have a lot of input into what we do. My goal is that at the end of the year my kids want to keep playing—that’s No. 1 on my list.”
For the third straight year Derouin’s club is still playing in mid-March and for the second straight year he arrives at the national championship with a win over Carleton in his back pocket.
But to finally get that boulder up and over the hill, the Gee-Gees have to beat Carleton and win a national championship. To be the best team in Ottawa they need to become the best team in the country. Having made it to the Moon they need to shoot for the stars.
“As great as the story is, we’re still No. 2,” says Derouin of the Gee-Gees’ success. “[But] our veteran group is ready to go. The story has an ending and it’s us winning a national championship… maybe I’m an idiot, maybe I’m blind that way, but I believe, this year, we can do it.”